Prez Kufuor: We will deliver a healthy economy

President John Agyekum Kufuor has said there will be no room for complacency in the management of the economy in spite of the gains made so far.

He noted that with the citizenry and the country's development partners having high expectations of the government's commitment to attaining a middle income status by 2015, there was the need to step up efforts at accelerated development.

President Kufuor said this in a speech read on his behalf by a Deputy Minister of Finance and Economic Planning, Prof Gyan Baffour, at the opening of the two-day Africa Consultative Conference being held in Accra.

The conference, which is being held in Ghana for the first time, has attracted about 300 prominent personalities from all over the world, including representatives from 30 African countries.

It is on the theme "Creating Better Business Environments for Enterprise Development: African and Global Lessons for More Effective Donor Practices".

The conference would offer participants the opportunity to take stock of business environment reforms in their respective countries, exchange ideas on good practices and chart a new course that will unleash the full potential of the private sector in Africa.

"People expect us to do more and to make use of resources better," President Kufuor stated.

He reiterated the government's commitment to creating a conducive business environment and said the government's commitment had yielded the necessary recognition as one of the best reforming countries in the world.

President Kufuor said that the government was earnestly working to improve the energy situation in the country to create better business opportunities for investors.

Again, President Kufuor stated that the government had strengthened the Bank of Ghana by ensuring its independence and also positioning it to reform the financial sector of the economy, which, he noted, was critical to the country's development agenda.

"The government would tackle major issues confronting the economy head-on," he said and added that Ghana was hoping to attract more businesses to the economy.

The Vice President in charge of Financial and Private Sector Development of the World Bank and Chief Economist of the International Finance Corporation, Mr Michael Klein, stated that over the past years there had been tremendous reforms in Africa, which have attracted some investments to the region.

He said there was the need to pursue reforms and regulations that would transform the economies of African countries.

Mr Klein said that Africa had the opportunity to learn from best practices across the world and to adopt such practices to ensure growth and development.

He said one of the strategies to reduce poverty was to create the enabling environment that would ensure the growth of the private sector and create jobs for the people.

During the conference, development agencies would also come under the spotlight to explore how best they could improve their work in support of business environment reforms in Africa.

Ghana would also give an account of its business environment reforms so far made.

The conference is being organised by the Donor Committee for Enterprise Development, a network of 20 multilateral development agencies in co-operation with the Private Sector Development Sector Group of Ghana.