Philomena Nyarko

"Non-food inflation rate of 24.1 percent is about four times as high as the food inflation rate of 5.8 percent."

"The country’s unadjusted GDP growth decelerated to 5.3 percent year-on-year in the second quarter, sharply down from a revised 10.8 percent in the same period last year."

"But despite contraction in several sectors, some as a result of the Ebola crisis in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea, the 2014 growth forecast, while down on 2013, still puts Ghana well above the IMF forecast for sub-Saharan African growth of 5.1 percent. Ghana, which exports gold, oil and cocoa, has been hard hit in the hospitality sector."

"Rural men and women lack decent work opportunities. Women in particular face greater difficulties in transforming their labour into more productive employment activities and their paid work into higher and more secured incomes."

"She said inadequate data on gender sensitive indicators had been a serious impediment to understanding the phenomenon, making informed policy decisions which would necessitate the drive to improve statistical systems and ensure the full mainstreaming of gender into data production, analysis and dissemination."

"Efforts to promote gender equity in labour markets and income generating activities as well as the support for decent employment initiatives in rural areas were hampered by the lack of comprehensive information on the multiple dimensions of social and gender inequalities."

"There was the need to introduce innovative programmes that would focus on rural areas and farming communities for the rural folks to get access to credit and savings, affordable public and private mechanisms which could provide access to land, markets, seeds, fertilisers and machinery."

"I urge policy makers to recognise women’s high participation in non-agricultural self-employment activities as an opportunity to increase rural employment and access to economic resources in strengthening a collective action especially within women groups."