Data in mid-year budget review misleading — Minority
The Minority has raised alarm on alleged misleading data presented by the Finance Minister, Dr Cassiel Ato Forson, in the mid-year budget review last week.
Speaking at a press conference held in Parliament today (Tuesday, July 29, 2025), a former Finance Minister, Dr Mohammed Amin Adam, said the Finance Minister's attribution of the 2022 economic crises as being significantly due to corruption and reckless expenditure were very unfortunate.
“In the years 2017, 2018 and 2019 Ghana recorded primary surpluses during the era of the previous government. In fact, the 2017 primary balance surplus was rather the first attained after more than a decade. Again, during the first half of 2024 Ghana recorded primary surplus,” he said.
Advice
The former minister advised Dr Forson to show humility and appreciate the solid foundation laid for him by the previous administration.
He said although the finance minister touted significant debt to GDP ratio reduction, he believed it would further go down after the rebasing.
Among some of the measures cited by Dr Adam were, “debt relief under the debt restructuring programme instituted by the previous government (eg. France has cancelled €87.7M of our debt; GDP expansion under the previous government, which raised the denominator and helped ease the debt ratio”.
He added that there was no major shift in the fiscal space, apart from the Cedi appreciation supported by those reserves.
“GDP grew from 4.9 per cent in first quarter of 2024 to 5.3 per cent in first quarter of 2025 an 8 per cent improvement. For context, there was a 50 per cent jump in GDP growth from 4.4 per cent in Q1 2016 to 6.6 per cent in 2017 first quarter,” he said.
Dr Adam indicated that outturns showed that the minister had to abandon his original fiscal programme and adopted the recommendations that were made by the minority when the original budget was presented.
“The expansionary plan presented has now had to be cut by some GH¢19 billion in line with the Minority's call for cuts.
It is because of this that the govt is able to achieve a 1.1 per cent primary balance” he said.
Additionally, the MP for Ofoase Ayirebi, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, argued that contrary to the government’s initial strategy to be able to increase revenue without introducing new taxes, the outturns at midyear showed that its revenue strategy had failed.
He emphasised that the government introduced eight new taxes after sweeping GH¢11 billion as balances brought forward while it also recorded a revenue shortfall of GH¢3 billion.
Mr Nkrumah asserted that consequences of the failed fiscal strategy were that the new taxes would soon translate into inflation as was being warned by the Bank of Ghana while the GH¢ 19 billion expenditure cuts without a compensating strategy were now affecting the government’s ability to deliver on public goods and services.
