Some minority members of parliament have chastised Finance Minister Seth Terkper, for not giving clear indications as to how government will be tackling the worsening energy crisis, in his presentation of the mid-year supplementary budget to Parliament on Monday, July 25.
The Finance Minister, asked Parliament to approve a supplementary budget of Ghc1.8 billion to run some programmes and policies for the rest of the year, 2016.
The request, according to Mr. Terkper, has been necessitated by the huge shortfalls in revenue generation.In the original 2016 Budget, government asked for GHS50, 109, 851,734 to fund its expenditure but due to challenges in accruing projected cash from the oil revenue, the power crisis, as well as a drop in commodity prices, it was impossible to meet the targets.
But the New Patriotic Party (NPP) Member of Parliament for Ablekuma North Constituency, told Citi News the presentation was not impressive particularly when government failed to clarify how it was going to tackle the worsening power crisis.
“It wasn’t an impressive delivery because we were not given detailed briefing about the supplementary budget; he didn’t talk about fiscal policy except to mention putting less pressure on the interest rate and also said Ghana Stock Exchange is to support the energy sector; but being the acting Power Minister, he didn’t stress on the energy crisis and that’s a very big problem. It looks as if he just read the budget because he just needs to spend money. There wasn’t any impressive thing that will propel us to the future or to stop the energy crisis in this country. He couldn’t say anything about VRA’s debt of $180 million to Nigeria, so what is he talking about? We are still in the energy crisis and he didn’t say anything about it only to be mentioning excessive borrowing; to redeem what?” he queried.
Energy sector investment of no use – Afenyo-Markin
NPP MP for Efutu in the Central Region, Alexander Afenyo-Markin, said government’s investment in the energy sector has come to nothing.
“I was so disappointed in the Minister’s presentation to the point that he sought to raise issues about the investments the government had made in the energy sector and tried to applaud what government had done, leaves me in some state of confusion because we are aware that all these investments came to nothing. Upon all the huge investment that is causing the Ghanaian taxpayer, the government has been unable to fix the dumsor. Businesses are still unable to get assurances of reliable power supply, and continue to incur high cost of running businesses, unemployment remains high and people continue to lose their jobs and households continue to suffer because of dumsor, so once again, it was the usual rhetoric. So in terms of the power sector, the government has done virtually nothing and this dumsor has been six years.”
Terkper only ‘campaigned’ with budget presentation – Nitiwul
The Deputy Minority Leader in Parliament, Dominic Nitiwul, has also criticized the midyear budget presentation, saying the Minister deviated.
Speaking to Citi News’ Vivan Kai Lokko after the Minister’s presentation, Mr. Nitiwul said though the Minister was expected to touch on various challenges facing the economy and the way forward, he rather focused on various campaign projects government is undertaking.
He believes Mr. Terkper could have done a better presentation.
-citifmonline