The Role of Trade and Non-trade Policy Factors in Promoting Exports and Reducing Poverty in Ghana

1.0 Introduction The importance of improved export performance in increasing household incomes and reducing poverty cannot be overemphasised. The proportion of persons living in are reported to be declining over the past century, however more significantly is that in the last two decades, the numbers of people living in poverty is observed to be declining. It is reported that the number that the number of people living on less than a dollar a day has declined by 200 million over the past 20 years despite the worlds population increase of 1.6 billion (Wolf, 2002). Driving these reductions in poverty has been the successful export oriented economies of SouthEast Asia, such as Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Korea. Further more recent drops in the numbers of people living in poverty have occurred mainly in a few large increasingly export-oriented economies such as China and India. All these countries are observed to have dramatically increased their exports, raised incomes and reduced poverty. It has been observed that " there are no examples of countries that have significantly reduced poverty without significantly increasing their exports " (Hoekmann et al., 2001). Sub-Saharan Africa on the other hand, is recorded to have the highest proportion of people living in poverty, with 46% of its people living under one dollar a day, compared with 15.3% in the successful export-oriented economies of SouthEast Asia. It is also the region to record the greatest erosion of its world export market shares. From a low level of 3.3% in the 1950, its share of world exports of goods has