Accra, Feb 8, GNA – Mr Ousmane Diagana, the World Bank Regional Vice President for Western and Central Africa, says it is important for government to work with development partners to ensure that economic opportunities in the country benefit everyone.
Having opportunities that provide the youth with access to job market and decent jobs, he said, was critical to curbing the tides of political instability that had been rising within the West African sub region.
Speaking at a press briefing in Accra, Mr Diagana said the World Bank was working on a new country partnership agreement aimed at creating a strong private sector led growth towards job creation.
He highlighted the need for government to have a structural reform that would create a better condition for local and foreign investments with an expanded tax base and increased revenue mobilisation.
“For us, it is crucial to ensure that development is owned by the country both in terms of the process, resources and programme that they would like to finance” he said.
He described Government’s vision of “Ghana Beyond Aid” as good development agenda for the long term, which required a strategy to enable Ghana generate resources to support its agenda.
Ghana, he said, could explore its potential in the areas of agriculture, favourable geographical position to export, good educational system for human capital development and access to energy, crucial to supporting the industrialisation agenda.
Mr Diagana, who was appointed in July 2020, noted that countries that developed had a clear vision of transforming natural resources or developing human capital with the ambition of attracting more foreign direct investment through policies and stated the commitment of the World Bank to provide advise based on analysis and experiences gained to help mobilise financial resources essential for the implementation of the vision and ensuring effective utilisation of resources.
“We see our role as development institution that continue to work to create a condition for sustaining goals. To make it equitably distributed so that inclusion, which is essential for the development of every country can be achieved,” he said.
The wave of coup within the sub region, Mr Diagana said, presented a new challenge for the World Bank, saying: “If we don’t think of how we plan our programmes in the context of fragility and provide support to those in the said group, obviously the situation will become even worse.”
Mr Diagana, who is on a three-day visit to Ghana, will engage in a high-level meeting with top government officials on matters of COVID-19 and the economy.
