‘Economy on life support’ – Minority

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Ghana’s economy is on “life support”, the Minority in Parliament has said.

“Our economy is on life support; any attempt to use propaganda will expose us,” warned Minority MP Isaac Adongo during a debate on Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta’s mid-year budget review presented to the house on Monday, 31 July.

“Where in the world do we use 10-year-old nominal values to make present calculations? Gross international reserves mean nothing if you don’t relate it with the depreciation of the cedi. Today, we are being told that a father who fails to raise revenue to feed his family should be praised,” the Bolga Central MP said.

Also, former Deputy Minister of Finance Cassiel Ato Forson said Akufo-Addo-led government’s Good News budget has now turned into a Bad News one.

Mr Ofori-Atta, while presenting the budget said the NPP government inherited a “weak” economy from the John Mahama-led National Democratic Congress (NDC) administration.

He said: “Mr Speaker, we inherited a weak economy characterised by high fiscal deficit, 9.3 per cent of GDP on a cash basis against the then-target of five per cent on cash basis. A primary deficit of 1.4 per cent of GDP against a target surplus of 1.2 per cent, a high debt-to-GDP ratio of 73 per cent of GDP, high inflation of 15.4 per cent, low credit to the private sector, high interest rate, 91 per cent treasury bill rate at 16.4 per cent, weak domestic revenue mobilisation, low external reserves of 2.8 months of import cover, policy reversals including some unconstrained expenditure, seven billion of our standing commitments and un-discharged obligations and weak economic growth of 3.5 per cent – the lowest in 15 years.”

He added: “But Mr Speaker, permit me to reassure this august house that the Akufo-Addo government is not daunted by this statistics that were passed on to us.”

But the Ajumako Enyan Essiam MP said: “From the information that we have heard today, from the document that we have just been given, I rise to say that unfortunately the budget is being revised from ‘Asempa’ (Goodnews) budget to ‘Asembone’ (Bad news) budget.

“I say this because this is bad news for this country. You will notice that non-tax revenues as projected, the programme was that from Q1 to Q2 the outturn will be 2.7 billion, Mr Speaker the out turn is now 2.1 billion, this is a cut. Clearly what this means is that there is a shortfall of almost GHS600million.”



Source: Ghana/ClassFMonline.com