| Abstract: The Ghana Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) outlines the five pillars - macroeconomic stability, production and employment, human resource development, special programs for the vulnerable and excluded, and, governance - on which the Government bases its strategy for reducing poverty. It is based on an extensive consultative process with civil society, and other stakeholders, and, includes a poverty diagnosis, an analysis of past policies, an outline of the elements of the strategy, a policy matrix, and selected indicators for monitoring and evaluating the strategy, with a set of programs for 2003-05. While overall, the PRSP provides a sound framework for implementing the government ' s anti-poverty agenda, the joint assessment stresses the authorities need to continue elaborating policy measures, prioritizing the policy framework to make it operational. Moreover, the description of poverty based on available data, still needs a more in-depth analysis of the linkages between growth, poverty reduction, and economic policies, usefully relating poverty reduction, and growth goals to the country ' s longer-term objectives. A major challenge should be to maintain fiscal discipline, and at the same time, achieve the re-allocation of objectives as designed by the PRSP to support poverty reduction. One area meriting greater attention, relates to the mobilization of resources for poverty spending, through a sufficient level of government spending. Other areas for improvement include the functioning of the financial sector, integration of the education sector into a comprehensive sectoral strategy, and,targeted measures to improve structural, social, and cultural impediments. Nevertheless, the joint assessment consider this PRSP provides sound basis for concessional assistance, and for debt relief. |
