The Greater Accra Regional Minister, Henry Quartey, has called on all stakeholders to collaborate and maximise efforts to help the country achieve the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
That, he said, would advance the country’s socio-economic growth.
“Our President’s role as a co-chair of the UN Secretary General’s SDG Advocates Emeritus Group places a responsibility on all stakeholders in the country to do their very best in realising the goals,” he said.
This was in a speech read on his behalf by the Municipal Chief Executive of the KorleKlottey Assembly, Samuel Tawiah, at a regional dissemination workshop on the 2022 SDG Voluntary National Review (VNR) Report yesterday in Accra.
The workshop afforded participants including Development Planning Officers representatives of youth, children, women Groups and Persons with Disabilities an opportunity to discuss Ghana’s second SDGs VNR report which was launched at the national level last month.
The report, presented at the UN High-Level Political Forum (HLPF) in July this year, showcased the country’s successes, challenges and lessons learnt in the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
It was mandatory for UN member countries which are signatories to a collection of 17 interlinked global goals set up in 2015 to make the world a better place for all.
Mr Quartey said the review process helped to identify shortcomings and robust ways to enable the country to accelerate the achievement of the SDGs in the next seven years.
He said there was the need for all to uphold the “Leave No One Behind” to ensure the country’s development was inclusive.
The Vice President of the NDPC, David Annan, said the commission would continue to collaborate with all for-profit and not-for-profit entities in the country and beyond to innovate around the goals to bring inclusive development to the citizenry.
He said Ghana’s implementation arrangement for the SDGs reflects the multi-stakeholder approach with state and non-state actors working together at all levels.
He said the country’s VNR presentation at the UN headquarters this year was a success.
“Emerging out of it is the need to help curb possible global food security challenges, strengthen the country’s resilience towards pandemics and the need for financial robustness for developing countries,” he said.
In a presentation, Dr Richard Bofah, the SDGs National Coordinator said the country was making progress in achieving the goals, but more needed to be done to meet the timeline.
For instance, he said, the percentage of the population who are categorised as poor reduced from 24.2 percent in 2013 to 23.4 percent in 2017 largely because of general improvements in the macroeconomic fundamentals including sustained economic growth.
However, he said, with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, nearly three out of four households reported a decrease in their income, and the proportion of households classified as poor was estimated to have risen to 25.5 per cent in 2020 from 23.4 percent in 2017.
BY JONATHAN DONKOR
