Ahead of yesterday’s Mid-year Budget Statement in Parliament, Development Economist, Dr. Michael Adongo called on the Finance Minister to be honest in his delivery to Ghanaians.
“This budget is going to be one we expect to be a truthful one because for all these years, the Finance Minister has been sugarcoating the budget, hiding his presentations in funny footnotes and a series of opaque entries but the reality has now caught up with us. I expect the budget to lay bare our woes.”
“The mid-year budget is normally put in place to ensure that if our projections change, if our revenue situations change, we could make some short-term changes to the budget,” he said.
Speaking after Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta’s Statement on the floor of Parliament, Dr. Adongo called into question, some of the figures presented by the Finance Minister.
“What I heard yesterday was a mathematical enigma. It was a walk on the water moment for the Finance Minister. All you needed was a calculator and you would know that what the Finance Minister said did not add up. I believe that he, being the cousin of the President, went and told the Parliament what he wanted knowing very well nothing will happen to him. Any Finance Minister doing this, aside from the President’s cousin will be given marching orders.”
“I felt it was a wasted hour. I was even more worried about the fact that if the IMF hears this review, just like you quoted me today, mark it, even in the first quarter of 2023, we are not going to get a dime from the IMF,” he said.
Source: A1radioonline.com|101.1MHz|Mark Kwasi Ahumah Smith|Ghana
