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Abena Osei Asare, the Deputy Minister of Finance, stated that steps have been taken to preserve budgetary restraint in 2024.
She claims that the government will not go beyond with its expenditures for the next election.
She was responding to concerns expressed by the Minority in Parliament that, as a result of the elections, the government might exceed its budget in 2024 in order to fulfill unanticipated campaign promises.
The Minority claims that readily available records show that the 2020 elections caused the government to have a 17% budget deficit.
John Jinapor, the Yapei-Kusawgu member of parliament, remarked, “You mentioned that you have experience with election year spending. Refer to the most recent data for the records in 2016; the shortfall was approximately 6%.
The Speaker, Mr. I refer to page 36, table 2 (A), in the IMF-Ghana decision May 2023 documents. During the 2020 election year, during your rule, your deficit was an astounding 17 percent. That has never occurred; no nation has a deficit of 17%.
In response, however, the Deputy Finance Minister said during her discussion of the budget presentation, “In the past, governments have used election years as auctioning periods, engaging in all kinds of projects to win votes.” However, in order to preserve the hard-won stability that we are seeing, this government is dedicating itself to strict budgetary consolidation and effective management of current obligations.
“Government is not initiating new commercial loan funded projects. Government has also put in an amount of money in the budget to clear their arrears so that we can complete existing projects,” Hon Osei Asare added.
Source: Ghanatodayonline.com
