Ghana can only become a middle income country if it followed a path of sustainable economic growth that engendered employment and reduced poverty to the minimum. Mr. Abraham Dwuma, Deputy Minister of Local Government, Rural Development and Environment said this at the opening of the Second Dialogue Platform on Local and Regional Economic Development (LRED) under the Rural Trade and Industry Promotion Project (RUTIPP) in Accra. He said such sustainable economic development should be based on a mutually enforcing relationship between economic growth, environmental protection and employment generation. The Local and Regional Economic Development Project is a component of the Sustainable Economic Development (SED) of the Ministry of Trade, Industry, Private Sector and President's Special Initiative and supported by the German Development Cooperation (GTZ). It aims at strengthening the capacity of the District, Municipal and Metropolitan Assemblies in analyzing the potential of the local economy to identify economically profitable economic initiatives, which would lead to improved business and investment at the local levels and build economic competitiveness of the regions. Mr. Dwuma noted that the project, which had started in the Brong Ahafo, Northern and Ashanti Regions and was expected to be repeated in other regions, would revitalize and reengineer the local economies to ensure total economic emancipation. "The need to revitalize and reengineer the local economies, the units of national economy, cannot be over-emphasized as the appropriate means of total economic emancipation." The Deputy Minister called for effective monitoring and evaluation of the project to ensure its full implementation saying; “I have no doubt that GTZ will apply its monitoring and evaluation mechanism effectively as it had done for previous projects”. Mr. Dwuma said he was optimistic that the dialogue would work on red tapeism and bureaucracy as it affected projects adding "until we are able to remove all forms of delays and corruption our business initiatives shall see no progress". He said the government to buttress the emphasis on rural economic development had put in place many projects to bring about development in those segments; key among which was the Rural Enterprise Project under the Environmental Sector and the Community Based Development Rural Development Projects. The Deputy Minister gave the assurance that the ministry would leave no stone unturned to ensure that decentralization was deepened as through that the Municipal, Metropolitan and District Assemblies (MMDAs) would open their doors to the private sector to foster public private partnership. Mrs Martha Brommelmeier, Country Director, GTZ, re-emphasized the need to develop synergies at the local levels to speed up development in rural communities and factor them into the national agenda. She gave the assurance of the continuous support of GTZ for the project to ensure that the desired results were met particularly the alleviation of rural poverty. Source: GNA