Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta, has emphasized the need to “trigger” a national sense of urgency as an effective measure to tackling Ghana’s economic challenges.
According to him, the continual presence of huge deficits, curtails “our capacity to leverage our many opportunities.”
Presenting the 2017 Budget statement before Parliament on Thursday, the Minister said to successively achieve the aim of reducing the huge deficit and tackling other economic challenges, government has to shun the culture of constant borrowing.
“Let me stress Mr. Speaker, that we cannot borrow our way out of these challenges…This will be tantamount to creating and sharing poverty which only leads to a loss of our fiscal sovereignty. So like the President said,we must all be in a hurry to grow our way into prosperity. This budget seeks to do this.”
According to him, “while inflation and interest rates have been on a decline, we still have to fix the underlying micro economic fundamentals to ensure that this strength is sustainable.”
The Minister believes the “economic challenges we face, require deliberate, well thought-out strategic steps and the backing and total support of the Ghanaian people” to fix the problem.
He revealed that, the budget “presents a clear road-map on how we will move this economy from its current state into a full-fledged middle income economy- a Ghana beyond aid.”
Economic challenges
Ghana has been battling with economic challenges which has led to a plunge in government’s revenue, rising unemployment, increasing agitation among business operators over high taxes, a depreciating currency and weak economic fundamentals among others.
In his first State of the Nation address, President Nana Akuffo Addo painted a gloomy picture of the economy, reiterating earlier reports by the Finance Minister, that the country’s current debt stock had ballooned to GH¢122 billion, leaving Ghana’s debt stock at 74% of GDP.
He added that, three key targets set under the IMF program – growth, fiscal deficit were missed.
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