Speaking at a round table forum held at Mensvic hotel in Accra, Deputy Executive Director for ACEP, Benjamin Boakye argued that the 7-year moving average which is used by governments to estimate the expected revenue from the oil industry has over the years deviated substantially from the actualized revenue, a situation he described as ‘failing Ghanaians’
‘…The trend has been similar using our formulae to calculate our expectation or our benchmark revenue for the year. It has either been over optimistic or pessimistic, which tells you that the formulae is failing us, If you check 2014, expected was 776million dollars but we had over 200million dollar extra. 2015 was a disaster, the initial estimate was about 1.2billion dollars but we had 396 million dollars. 2016 we also had a shortfall ’
The petroleum revenue management law which enforced the establishment of the Ghana Stabilization fund as buffer to cushion the budget in times like this has been depleted with a constant recapping by the previous government Benjamin Boakye noted.
‘Because of the fiscal challenges we have had as country, government is unable to save into the Ghana stabilization fund. The cap is still at the 100 million dollars. The buffer in the Ghana stabilization fund will not be enough for sustain the budget.’ He said.
Speaking on the Annual Budget Funding Amount (ABFA), ACEP charged government to outline the specific priority areas the ABFA will be spent on for the 2017 to 2019 priority window.
According to Mr. Boakye, enlisting the priority areas will enhance tracking of the intended projects to be implemented. Read Full Story
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