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The Minority Caucus in Parliament has said the 2022 mid-year budget review presented by the Finance Minister is ‘nothing but empty’.
According to the caucus, Ken Ofori-Atta missed a fine opportunity to tell Ghanaians the major issues affecting them and how that would be addressed.
Addressing the media after the delivery of the budget, Member of Parliament for Ajumako-Enyan-Esiam, Casiel Ato Forson said the presentation was very empty.
The budget was “very empty. Everything in this country 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.”
“Today, he comes here once again only to tell us that he has missed all the targets he set in the 2022 budget, everyone of them, he could not achieve.”
The former deputy Finance Minister who expected Ken Ofori-Atta to touch on Ghana’s debt noted that “today, our public debt is in excess of 400billion cedis and yet the Minister in this document fails to talk about the public debt.”
He therefore called on the New Patriotic Party to hand over the baton to the opposition National Democratic Congress to bring stability to the economy.
“We can do it, we have done it before,” he said.
The Finance Minister in presenting the mid-year budget review said that the overall Real GDP for 2021 grew strongly by 5.4 percent compared to 0.5 percent recorded in 2020 and the revised 2021 annual target of 5.1 percent.
He disclosed that non-oil GDP growth also increased to 6.9 percent compared to a growth of 1.0 percent recorded in 2020, and the revised 2021 target of 7.0 percent while the overall budget deficit of GH¢28,095 million (5.6% of GDP), against a deficit target of GH¢19,730 million (3.9% of GDP).
“Furthermore, based on the developments for the first six months of 2022 and outlook for the rest of the year, we have accordingly revised the macro-fiscal targets for 2022 as follows: Overall GDP Growth rate of 3.7 percent down from 5.8 percent; Non-Oil GDP Growth rate of to 4.3 percent down from 5.9 percent, End period inflation of 28.5 percent up from 8 percent; The overall fiscal deficit of 6.6% of GDP down from 7.4%”, he announced.
