Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, today, people are now beginning to accept it. If you look also at clause 2 -- substituting words -- I know we are not at the Consideration Stage, the Minister is saying that we should substitute “poverty through growth”, which is a very popular phrase in the Growth and Poverty Reduction Strategy document for a new admission that the growth ought to be qualified by “economic”. I appreciate it, that is what he is doing; but if you look at GPRS I, GPRS II, they are always talking about reducing poverty through growth; and now they want to qualify it with economic growth.
Mr. Speaker, a few weeks ago, when the debate about the status of the Millennium Challenge Account (MCA) came up, one of the officials of the MCA was quoted in the Daily Graphic as saying that it was not meant to alleviate poverty. I thought that somebody would have come out to challenge that. In fact, one of the requirements to qualify for this, apart from governing justly, investing in people and many other related issues, the essential thing is about your economic performance and the fact that you have a per capita income of USD1,400. It is one of the requirements under the Millennium Challenge Corporation by which people qualify to be able to source the funding.
Today, admittedly, I have heard people accept that by the Ghana Living Standards Survey -- we have said it here, and I
will like to repeat it. The Minority has no intention whatsoever to scuttle this opportunity of Ghana sourcing the funding of five hundred million - [Interruption] -- All right, we can write to Congress - [Interruption] All right, no problem.
Mr. Speaker, we were just drawing the attention of Government to accept certain realities. Today, I was amazed at people quoting Ghana Living Standard Survey to buttress their point about the incidence and existence of poverty in Ghana, which figures were contested here by the Minister for Private Sector Reforms when I made reference to them and said that by the Ghana Living Standard Survey of 1998 and 1999, we could not understand any intervention aimed at ameliorating poverty which would exclude the Upper East and Upper West Regions - statistically.
So if you say you want to ameliorate poverty with an intervention of $547 million and you exclude the areas in Ghana most affected by poverty, for me, it is a contradiction, unless you are not sincere to committing yourself to ameliorating poverty. The danger is that, if we do not spread it across, we will exacerbate the imbalances in the country which imbalances already point to varying -- Indeed, in the GPRS, they used the words, “special distribution of poverty”, and that is the reality. That is why we were saying that in his contribution he should try to have some intervention that would take care of the most deprived districts and the most deprived regions of Ghana, including the Upper East, the Upper West and some parts of the Central Region. Mr. Speaker, it is remarkable to know that people now accept that some other useful statistics exist. Mr. Speaker, I may have to wind up for other people to make their contributions.
Mr. Speaker, in conclusion, I find some of the construction very interesting even
