A lame duck budget — CPP
The Convention People’s Party (CPP) has described the 2015 budget as a “lame duck budget”, which offers no immediate solution to the water and electricity crises.
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According to the party, the budget, read by the minister of Finance rather adds to the burden on ordinary Ghanaians with a huge new tax rise on petroleum products.
‘’It’s a do-nothing budget from a do-nothing Government. It’s a budget of missed opportunities and missed targets,’’ the CPP stated.
A statement on the budget signed by the Director of Communications of CPP, Nii Armah Akomfrah, condemned the imposition of a 17.5 per cent special petroleum tax, which adds to the hardship on an already impoverished majority.
According to the CPP statement, last year’s budget, dubbed a “Transformational Budget,” which aimed to “Rise to The Challenge,” failed miserably and had indeed changed the economy for the worse.
The statement said it was, therefore, a farce for the Government to still be talking about having a transformational agenda.
Missed targets
It said the budget was full of repetition of intentions; with several missed targets, as revenue and expenditure targets both experienced shortfalls.
The national debt, the statement said, had reached a staggering 60.8 per cent of GDP and speeding recklessly towards another HIPC.
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According to the statement, this would be bearable if Ghanaians could fully understand, see and feel the benefits.
‘’We are all aware of the bloating of the cost of the Ridge Hospital works and, thus, many would question the huge cost of the projects listed as benefits of these astronomical loans,’’ it stated.
The statement said the slow rate of disbursements of grants must surely be an indication of the confidence donors have in the Government’s budgeting and how it spends money, with nothing meaningful offered on anti-corruption measures to inspire confidence.
‘’Ghana, the land of plenty, blessed with gold, diamond, bauxite, manganese and an oil exporter still cannot keep its lights on and needs to beg to function,’’ the statement observed.
The statement lamented that a country blessed with arable lands, plants of medicinal value, the benefit and potential of rivers and oil and gas, had its important resource, her people, remaining unemployed, hungry and thirsty.
This is because the “Lame Duck Budget” failed to tackle unemployment in any significant way, and with a growth now of only 3.9 per cent for the coming year, both employed and unemployed are in for a very rough year, the statement said.
‘’Our economy is cash-strapped and the Government is to blame for that perilous situation,’’ the statement added.
On international reserve of three months of import cover, the CPP statement reminded the Government that given the country’s vulnerability to commodity shocks, a cushion of four to six months of reserves was essential.
The statement said the announcement by a minister of achievements in the water and power sectors would seem to be having no effect on the ongoing abysmal performance in those sectors.
The CPP position
The CPP statement noted that the country needed to ensure that Ghana’s growth, which is now heavily influenced by mining and oil, is meaningful and must not remain a measure of increased extraction of our resources and increased profits for foreign or off-shore interests.
On Ebola, the statement said it remained a major threat for Ghana, thus, the Government response taken together with those of regional and continental governments is inadequate.
The CPP statement therefore called for an alternative path which will address the deficiencies of the budget with an increased investment in agriculture to feed the nation and build real food security, massive industrialisation linked with rural economic activities.
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The NDC government’s answers to our problems, according to the CPP statement, is rooted rather in the failing policies of the past.
It said their policy of stabilisation had included austerity measures such as expenditure cuts, freezing of employment and removal of subsidies to bridge revenue and expenditure imbalances to attain the much coveted single digit rate of inflation.
The statement said with inflation now galloping in double digits, the government no longer had a strategy and this was very apparent.
Promote growth
According to the statement, the deficits that underlie the weak cedi persist, and the private sector in the manufacturing and agricultural sectors is either moribund or certainly not growing in capacity, capability, efficiency and prosperity to promote growth.
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The statement said the Government claimed to be managing the economy on behalf of Ghanaians for a fee which they used in running their electoral campaigns and buying political power.
The CPP statement observed that under-production and unemployment were the greatest impediments to prosperity, and they were what should be the target of the Government.
‘’Our development policy must be founded on the development of the productive resources of the country to satisfy domestic demand and export to achieve an internally sustained and balanced growth, full employment and prosperity. This will reduce our dependency on imports, reduce our trade deficit and generally reconstruct the colonial economy that has been inflicted on us,’’ the statement observed.
The statement further said that the focus should be on food and raw agriculture material for import substitutes in the food processing and beverage manufacturing sectors.
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