Member of Parliament for Cape Coast South, George Kweku Ricketts-Hagan has commended the government for making national industrialisation rehabilitation programme a part of the 2017 budget.
The former Deputy Minister for Trade and Industry said while the programme is commendable, it is important to put on record it was something that the Akufo-Addo government took from the 2012 budget statement of the Mahama-led administration.
“… I want to point out and commend what I believe is a reasonable programme in the 2017 budget. I will refer to it as a programme and not initiative because the initiative actually has already started.
“It did [start] under the previous government, President John Mahama”, Mr. Ricketts-Hagan said while contributing to the debate on the 2017 budget statement on the floor of Parliament on Wednesday.
He noted it was under that programme that the Kommenda Sugar Factory was revived during the tenure of John Mahama.
Quoting the NDC manifesto, Mr Ricketts-Hagan said: “in 2017, the ministry will facilitate the development of an allegation project and sugarcane plantation with money that has already be approved by this house”.
He said an amount GHC24.5 million has been approved by the NDC government to be used for so industrialization.
Meanwhile Mr Ricketts-Hagan who was once Deputy Finance Minister , was worried about how the government wants to achieve so much in too short a time.
“Now I want to look at the micro economics that this budget has presented. This budget is doing too many things in too short a time with very little money,” he observed.
Mr. Ricketts-Hagan said “I still want to find where the money to do all these monumental expenditures are actually going to come from because there is the free senior high school, one-village-one dam, one district-one-factory and one constituency on million dollars”.
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