6 CONCLUSION “It is expected that country efforts will be enhanced and strengthened by the APR process and that, after the first review, countries will sustain their efforts to achieve the shared objectives identified in the APRM and their Programmes of Action. This will require updating these Programmes of Action on a regular basis on the basis of self-monitoring results of their own progress and lessons learned from sharing with other countries, which will be facilitated actively by the APRM … Subsequent peer reviews will monitor progress against these benchmarks as defined in the countries' evolving Programmes of Action.” NEPAD/HSGIC-03-2003/APRM/Guideline/OSCI, Section 6.5, 9 March 2003 6.1 Over-arching issues 1. Chapters 2 to 5 of this report provide brief summaries of the status of Ghana across the four focus areas based on the CSAR, background information and the findings of the CRM. The various sections elaborate on the recommendations of the Panel for each of the thematic areas of Democracy and Good Political Governance, Economic Governance and Management, Corporate Governance and Socio-Economic Development. 2. In general, there is consensus that Ghana is well on course in pursuing the main objectives of the APRM. Many challenges still remain, however, which need further action and must be addressed in order for Ghana to meet the ultimate objectives of NEPAD and the APRM. These challenges are recognised in the recommendations made by the Panel in this report, and are also covered in the Programme of Action (Appendix II) presented by Ghana following the self-assessment and review exercises. 3. Without being selective or attempting to define priorities, there are a few areas of deficiency in the Ghanaian system that are of a recurring or crosscutting nature and have been identified in more than one thematic area. These more general problems may require a holistic, immediate and critical approach because of the wider impact they have on the quality of governance in all areas of activity. The salient overarching issues are the following: (a) capacity constraints; (b) gender equity; (c) corruption; (d) decentralisation; (e) land issues (f) chieftaincy, (g) unemployment and (f) external dependency. 139