• The minister on July 29 presented the mid-year budget review to lawmakers
• He defends the government’s decision to stick to its budgetary appropriation
Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta, has advanced a possible reason his presentation of the mid-year budget review went smoothly without the usual booing and jeering especially by opposition Members of Parliament.
The minister in late July 2021 presented the mid-year budget to lawmakers with key takeaways being the decision not to ask for more money and not to introduce new taxes.
Speaking on Asaase Radio’s August 5, 2021, Evening News, Ofori-Atta said the fact that Ghana is having a good economic year despite the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic could have accounted for the lack of heckling.
“It must be that we are having a good year so far. But I think typically we go to Parliament and ask for a supplementary and once it did not require that, it then came to a conversation on the state of the economy and the nation and where we should be going as a people and I think that is very healthy.
“The issue is really in our forecasting and anticipating what we would need for the year and making sure that as finance minister, we stick to those numbers,” he added.
Touching on the decision by the government not to ask for more money, Ofori-Atta put it down to a laid down plan that his outfit was committed to respecting.
He said the government has by this move given “a lot of comfort and clarity and a sense of commitment … that it is a new era that has come in which finance ministers are going to try and work within the appropriation that the august house has given us.”
In debating the budget review, Minority Leader, Haruna Iddrisu said there was no money in essence for the government to make any further demands whilst the Ranking Member on Finance, Cassiel Ato-Forson, projected that by the end of the year, despite not asking for more money in his mid-year review, the finance minister will by all means overrun his allocations.
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