Reverend Kwadwo Nkrumah, director of Help Crush AIDS Ghana (HELPCAG), a Kumasi-based NGO, who made the call, said the development of market opportunities for cassava could contribute immensely to poverty alleviation, especially in resource constrained households and increase household food security.

Rev. Nkrumah made the call at a meeting of the Adidwan branch of the Food Plant Growers Association at Adidwan in the Sekyere West District of Ashanti.

The meeting was to discuss the economic importance of cassava and the need for the farmers to plant the crop to increase their incomes.

Rev. Nkrumah said cassava provided livelihood for about 500 million farmers and countless processors and traders around the world.

He said apart from serving as a staple food for hundreds of millions of people in the tropical belt, cassava had other diverse uses and markets in the industrial, textile and the medical sectors, which if properly explored could lead to a boom for the producers.

Rev. Nkrumah called for infrastructure development such as roads, communication and input supply systems in cassava producing areas to reduce the current high production cost and make cassava producing more competitive to grains.

He appealed to the government to take steps to develop the local cassava market to enable more farmers to produce the crop for household consumption and as a reliable income earner in order to reduce poverty in the rural areas.

Mr Titus Kwaku Dassah, chairman of the Association, said the farmers were prepared to go into cassava production provided they could get ready market for their produce. GNA 7) Govt can increase spending on health, education ...Because of debt relief - Baah-Wiredu The Minister of Finance and Economic Planning, Mr Kwadwo Baah-Wiredu, on Monday said the debt relief by the G-8 countries was an opportunity for the government to increase spending in the major sectors of the economy.

Speaking in an interview with the Ghana News Agency, Mr Baah-Wiredu explained that the debt relief from these multilateral institutions would increase the stock of money available to the country to engender an accelerated pace of development in the years ahead.

"What this also means is that we will now have more funds to go round providing for health, education, roads, port development, rail-roads and up-scaling services throughout the country," he said.

The G-8 spearheaded by the United Kingdom at the weekend announced the cancellation of the debt owed it by 18 countries to the tune of 40 billion dollars with Ghana's portion standing at 4.1 billion dollars.

Africa's debt currently stands at 300 billion dollars and is still rising. Other countries to benefit from the decision are Senegal, Mali, Mauritania, Ethiopia, Uganda, Tanzania, Mozambique and Rwanda.

The rest are Zambia, Madagascar, Benin, Burkina Faso and Niger. Mr Baah-Wiredu said Ghana's debt to other multilateral donors such as the Nordic Fund, Arab Bank for Economic Development (BADEA), OPEC Fund, International Fund for International Development, European Development Fund, however, still stood adding, "we must work hard at meeting our payment schedules."

Nine other countries hope to qualify in the next year and a half bringing the total sum of debt relief to just over 55 billion dollars.

According to the Finance Minister, the relief was for countries already benefiting from Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) relief since they had consistently met the criteria to effectively fight corruption and promote good governance.

The government has said Ghana would receive HIPC Relief of 3.6 billion dollars to be paid over a 20-year period.

Organisations such as Oxfam and Jubilee 2000 have over the years advocated for the total cancellation of debt owed to the world's richest countries by the poorest ones.

The rich countries had heeded this call, however, recent overtures of British Prime Minister, Tony Blair under the Africa Commission Project has pointed to either reducing or cancelling the debt owed to the world's rich.

The UK, which would hold the G-8 Presidency in July, aims at increasing development aid to the poorest countries most of which are in Africa.