Terkper Appeals For UN Economic Assisistance

The Minister of Finance and Economic Planning, Mr Seth Terkper, has appealed to the United Nations system to assist the country in its smooth and efficient transitional agenda from a lower income to a middle income country.

That, he said, was important so that the country was not stampeded into a status for which it was not there yet.

Addressing the first inter-ministerial meeting on Delivering as One in Ghana, a UN initiative, Mr Terkper said the assistance of the UN system was key because it had the expertise in the development agenda and social elements to seek the welfare of the masses.

The Delivering as One (DaO) is a UN reform initiative to fully integrate all work streams of UN activities in order to deliver more coherent and effective development assistance to programme countries.

The DaO approach is part of the ongoing efforts towards reforming the UN system, which started in 2006 based on an initiative of former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to look at ways in which the UN could become a better partner to governments and people globally.

Mr Terkper said the country was experiencing challenges since moving into the brackets of the middle income earning country, adding that already access to grants and concessionary loans had been withdrawn.

On the DaO approach, he said the government was already moving in an integrated approach in its expenditure, adding that the move by the UN system was, therefore, a complement of what the government was doing.

He was convinced that the government, in partnership with the UN system in the country, would learn from lessons from other countries that had already piloted the DaO to promote sustainable development acceptable to the country’s development agenda.

The UN Resident Coordinator, Ms Ruby Sandhu-Rojon,was grateful to the government for taking the decision that the UN system in the country should adopt the DaO and urged the UN system to look at making a greater impact to support the key areas of the country.