GHANA FRANCE SIGN DEBT RELIEF AND DEVELOPMENT AGREEMENT

The Government of Ghana and the French Government signed a grant agreement for an amount of 21million euros on Monday 18th February 2008. The Hon. Deputy Minister of Finance and Economic Planning Professor Gyan-Baffour signed on behalf of the Government of Ghana and His Excellency Pierre Jacquemot, French Ambassador to Ghana signed on behalf of the French Government. To witness the signing ceremony was Mr. Benoit Lebeurre, Resident Manager of the Agence Francaise de Developpement.

This agreement renews for the next 3 years the mechanism put in place in 2004, by which France converted 63 m euros of loan repayments by Ghana into grants to be disbursed in tranches of 7 million euros per year over 9 years.

The Hon. Deputy Minister in his remarks thanked the French Government for its continuous support to the country. He also added that, “the quality of France’s assistance to Ghana is quite commendable. It is equally worthy to note that the quantum of aid Ghana is receiving from France is on the increase”.

He also said France has supported Ghana through the bilateral cooperation effort in infrastructure development, agriculture and provision of water and sanitation projects.

His Excellency Pierre Jacquemot, the French Ambassador to Ghana in his remarks said France has decided to increase its contribution to MDBS from 2007 with additional funds through a Concessional 30 million Euros Loan to be disbursed from 2007 to 2009. He mentioned that there was a clear trend for donors to move toward a more global Budget Support wherever that is possible, and Ghana is a country where we are confident that this type of support has a predominant role.

He also added that by this agreement, France would be disbursing 7 million euros to Ghana to the MDBS, for a cumulative amount of 21 million over the next 3 years.

He said the French Government considers the decision to allocate Debt Transformation to the MDBS was the right because they think MDBS is a great tool for funding the GPRS II while being an exceptional forum for dialogue between the government of Ghana and its Development Partners on key sectoral and crosscutting issues.

The two countries agreed that these grants would be used as France’s contribution to the Multi Donor Budget Support (MDBS) to aid the implementation of the Growth and Poverty Reduction Strategy (GPRS) and the reinforcement of the microeconomic stability of the country.

France’s annual contribution to MDBS now amounts to 17 million Euro, making France one of the principal bilateral contributors of Multi Donor Budget Support.

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