Ranking Member on Parliament’s Finance Committee, Cassiel Ato Forson is not impressed with the government’s mid-year review of the Budget Statement and Economic Policy.
Mr. Forson said the budget did not offer the hope of addressing Ghana’s economic challenges.
“We have a country that is in crisis economically, everything is not working yet the Minister responsible for Finance appeared before us and said nothing. He failed to address the very concerns of the ordinary Ghanaians,” the Ajumako-Enyan-Esiam MP said.
He also cast doubts over the government’s ability to achieve its economic growth estimates.
The Minister of Finance, Ken Ofori-Atta during the presentation of the mid-year budget to Parliament for approval announced a revision of the government’s projected economic growth rate estimate of 5.8% for 2022 to 3.7%.
He indicated that global developments such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine had resulted in a surge in inflation to 29.8% as of June 2022.
“In the light of the significant changes in the global environment and our own unique challenges, we have revised our economic growth estimate for 2022 to 3.7% down from 5.8% as stated in the 2022 budget,” Ken Ofori-Atta said.
But this did not sit well with the Minority side, who attributed Ghana’s rising debt stock to the government’s decision to resort to loans.
“Today, he comes here once again only to tell us that he has missed all the targets he set in the 2022 budget. Every one of them he could not achieve. Only for him to propose targets he is going to miss again by the end of the year 2022… Our Minister responsible for Finance informed all of us that the GDP growth for the year 2022 has been revised from 5.8% to 3.7%, I bet to say that the 3.7% he cannot achieve it”.
“This government, all that they know is solve every problem with debt. I call it one problem, one loan. That is what this government is practising. Today, our public debt is in excess of GH¢400. The Finance Minister failed to tell us we cannot pay our debts…unfortunately, what we witnessed today is nothing but incompetence,” he argued.