The informal economy is the focus of a series of seminars being organised by the Institute of Statistics, Social and Economic Research (ISSER) in collaboration with Merchant Bank Ghana this year. Dzodzi Tsikata, a Senior Research Fellow of ISSER and coordinator of the programme said the seminars with the theme; “The Informal Economy and Ghana’s Future Development; Policy, Dilemmas and Prospects”, were aimed at assessing the informal economy’s contributions to the country’s development. “It is also prospective about how the sector can be strengthened and improved to serve Ghana in its second half century”. Dzodzi Tsikata observed that the second part of the twentieth century saw many African countries going through an urban revolution with the informal economy emerging as a description and analysis of the largely unregulated economic activities that predominated in these new cities. Dr Tsikata noted that even though the emergence of the informal economy may not have been the ideal state made development envisaged after independence, it is important to examine what social forms organised the sector and what potential it held for further evolution of the market. Some of the topics for the seminars were; Changing State Attitudes to the Informal Economy in the context of Economic Liberalisation; New trends in informal social Security Systems in Ghana and The Informal Sector in Health. Other topics were Women and the Informal Economy and Poverty Reduction, the GPRS and the Informal Economy. The seminars begin on Monday and would be held fortnightly between January and June this year in Accra. Source: The Ghanaian Times