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News from Wednesday, July 24, 2019
Source: ghananewsagency.org
2019-07-24
Professor George Gyan-Baffour at the meeting
Ghana presented its first National Voluntary Review (VNR) report on the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development at the 2019 High Level Political Forum (HLPF) at the United Nations on July 17th.
The HLPF is part of the monitoring and review mechanism of the 2030 Agenda and provides a platform to review progress made in implementing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), mutual learning and building partnerships for the 2030 Agenda. accelerate the implementation of the SDGs. .
A statement issued by the National Development Planning Commission (NDPC), with a copy to the Ghana News Agency, indicates that the HLPF on Sustainable Development began Tuesday, July 9 at UN Headquarters in New Delhi. York, on "Empowering People and Ensuring Inclusion and Equality". and closes Friday, July 19th.
The 2019 HLPF brought together more than 2,000 participants from governments, business, academia, civil society organizations, youth groups and UN agencies.
Professor George Gyan-Baffour, Minister of Planning and Member of Parliament for Wenchi, presented the review report on behalf of the government. He revealed that Ghana has made progress on many of the Sustainable Development Goals, adding that "overall, poverty has decreased slightly from 24.2 percent in 2013 to 23.4 percent in 2017.
He said GDP growth remained robust, reaching 8.1 percent in 2017, making Ghana the second fastest growing economy in Africa that year.
He said the main macroeconomic indicators, including the budget deficit, inflation and interest rates, tended to fall, adding that the trade balance had registered surpluses in 2017 and 2018, leading to an improvement. balance of payments.
Acting from the social sector, he said that access to education, especially at the upper secondary level, has generally improved.
This, he attributed to the introduction of the government's flagship free initiative for high school, which allowed an additional 271,000 students to enroll in SHS for the 2017 school years / 18 and 2018/19.
He said that gender parity had been reached at the grbadroots level.
According to the minister, the proportion of the population with access to electricity has also improved, from 70.6% in 2013 to 81.1% in 2017.
On the environment, forest cover had increased slightly. Ghana has started implementation of the 2017-2040 Forest Planting Strategy to protect forest cover to ensure a sustainable supply of planted forest goods and services.
In his presentation, the Minister highlighted several important lessons from the implementation of the SDGs in Ghana.
These included the importance of developing strategic partnerships with key stakeholders; build strong links between government, research institutes, universities, the private sector and other stakeholders for research and innovation; capacity building of subnational structures for effective implementation of the SDGs; mobilize sufficient national resources to maintain and expand current interventions; strengthen the capacity to generate and use administrative data for tracking results.
For Professor Gyan-Baffour, with respect to some of the implementation challenges, sustained funding is critical to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.
He added that improved domestic resource mobilization and mobilization of available private sector resources would be needed to accelerate the implementation of priority interventions.
The government has set up a data roadmap with three priority areas for action: filling the gaps, encouraging the use of data by strengthening the data ecosystem.
According to the statement, the interest of Ghana's NRV presentation is that the government is doing this together with the platform of civil society organizations on sustainable development goals, illustrating to the world the partnership agreement that exists between the two.
In his mind, "in the spirit of" not leaving anyone, "the presentation of the CSOs was made by Mr. Alexandra Bankole Williams, a visually impaired person who was guided from the desk to his seat by the Minister.
According to the statement, the platform of civil society organizations was grateful to the government for the opportunity to work together to implement the Sustainable Development Goals and indicated that they were willing to collaborate with the government to improve awareness of the Sustainable Development Goals.
Williams said, "Citizen awareness of sustainable development goals was crucial because many of them can only be achieved through behavioral change."
The civil society organization platform representative also called on the government to contribute to building the capacity of civil society organizations for effective data collection, as they also produce complementary data to monitor progress.
The other state ministers who participated in the 2019 HLPF were Dr. Matthew Opoku-Prempeh, Minister of Education; Mr. Ignatius Baffour-Awuah, Minister of Employment and Labor Relations; Mrs. Patricia Appiagyei; Deputy Minister of the Environment, Science, Technology and Innovation; Ms. Abena Osei Asare, Deputy Minister of Finance and Ms. Barbara Ayisi Asher, Deputy Minister of Public Works and Housing.
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