CPP urges NDC to plan to avoid problems
But the CPP insisted that “his words sum up an approach which has led to Ghana’s current crisis, a failure to plan”.
A statement signed by Nii Armah Akomfrah, CPP Director of Communications, described the 2013 budget as demonstrating government’s inadequacy on its development mission and objective.
It said the government’s monetary policy expenditure cuts were not only medieval but for 30 years had not worked to revive the depressed economy.
According to the statement, the proposition of current Economics science was that short-term monetary expansion was the road to the achievement of long-term stability and deficit reduction.
“We call on the Finance Minister to revise his notes. He should understand that his purpose in the management of the economy is to demonstrate that we are capable as a nation to steer and manage our affairs and would not submit to policy dictates in exchange for donation or so-called development assistance,” it stated.
In the view of the CPP, Ghana’s economy remained stuck in “fiscal consolidation” mode and asked when it would enter the development mode.
It said total revenue and grants was below target but expenditure was higher than the budget estimate, leading to a fiscal deficit of 12 per cent of GDP, against a target deficit equivalent to 6.7 per cent of GDP.
Agriculture and industry, according to the CPP, both grew below target, with the services sector marginally performing above target.
Interest rates, the party stated, remained too high and still hugely a reflection of banking inefficiencies, making it harder for businesses to access credit at reasonable rates, thereby depressing growth.
The CPP statement said the 2013 budget offered no immediate solution on the water and electricity crisis, saying much of it was a repetition of intentions.
It said the government proposed, “as a priority over the medium term, to ensure that all primary, junior and senior high schools in the country have access to clean and potable” water, against a backdrop of failure to deliver uninterrupted water to homes.
The national debt, the CPP stated, had reached a staggering Ghc35 billion, representing close to 50 per cent of GDP and speeding recklessly towards another HIPC.
“This figure will be bearable if Ghanaians can fully understand, see and feel the benefits. Borrowing must be channelled into productive investment which will ultimately reduce our deficit,” it stated.
According to the CPP, Ghana, the land of plenty, blessed with gold, diamond, bauxite, manganese, oil, etc. still needed to beg to function, as self–sufficiency in the energy sector was to be subjected to the 2nd compact of the Millennium Challenge Account.
It said in a country blessed with arable land, plants of medicinal value, the benefits and a huge potential of rivers, the most important resource of Ghana, its people, remained unemployed, hungry and thirsty in the midst of plenty and the “YENTUMI BUDGET” failed to note employment as a major part of its programme.
In the CPP’s view, we needed to ensure that Ghana’s growth, which is often heavily influenced by mining and oil, was meaningful and must not become a measure of increased extraction of our resources and increased profits for foreign or offshore interests.
It said malaria remained the number one killer of children in Ghana, yet the filth and open sewage remained and our sanitation one of the worst in the region.
“Our human and natural resources must be fully tapped to stop Ghana from becoming a HIPC country. We must halt the over-reliance on donor countries which currently means over 40 per cent of our budget is donor funded. This budget fails to address the issue,” the CPP statement pointed out.
According to the party, though our electricity grew by 12 per cent, that was meaningless against the current crisis and had not ended what the party called "DUMSO! DUMS0!
The CPP said Ghana’s railway had virtually collapsed and the rehabilitation works remained painfully slow.
The approach of a CPP government, therefore, would be the development of an internal capacity for the achievement of an internally sustained growth through the development of the productive resources of the nation to create employment and eradicate the structural deficits that underlay our poverty, the statement indicated.
