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The government Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) has so far benefited more than 330,438 households across the country, Mr Ken Ofori-Atta, the Minister of Finance has said.

The number of household beneficiaries is an increase over the 213,044 households reported in the 2019 budget, representing a percentage increase of 35.5 per cent.

Mr Ofori-Atta gave the update on Monday when delivering the Mid-Year Fiscal Policy Review of the 2019 Budget Statement and Economic Policy and Supplementary Estimates in Parliament in Accra.

He said that two cycles of regular LEAP payments were made as at June, 2019 to the households, covering 1,420,883 extremely poor individuals.

Currently, he said the programme pays grants to beneficiaries bi-monthly at the rate of GHC64.00 for a one-member household, GHC 76.00 for two-member household, GHC 88.00 for a three-member household and GHC 106.00 a four-member household and above.

The LEAP programme, he said had instituted a re-certification and graduation strategy to wean off beneficiaries whose circumstances have improved and no longer qualify to be on the programme.

Touching on the School Feeding Programme, he noted that the programme was serving about 2.6 million pupils in 8,676 primary schools with one meal every school-going day.

Mr Ofori-Atta said in order to improve the effectiveness and enhance the management of the programme, financial and operational controls were being strengthened to reduce waste and improve linkages with local farmers.

Talking about the Population and Housing Census, he said the year 2020 marked 10 years since the last census in the country and that the government had initiated steps to conduct the Population and Housing census next year.

He said the Ghana Statistical Service had commenced a number of preparatory activities including the conduct of the trial census and mapping out enumeration areas in 130 out of the 260 districts in the country.

Following the exercise, he stated that a total of 21,590 out of 37,000 enumeration area maps had been updated.

He said the census mapping exercise was expected to be completed by September 2019 and arrangements for procuring the required logistics and recruitment of about 70,000 field staff were underway in preparation towards the main census.