Ken Ofori-Atta
Mid-Year Review of the government Budget and Financial Statement is informed by law. The Public Financial Management Act enjoins the Finance Minister to, on behalf of the President, present the review to Parliament.
As the name suggests, the review which has become routine is to review the country’s economic performance over the last six months and project outcomes for the second half of the year. We have been told that the government is not likely to demand new expenditure in the mid-year review but present the new direction to fix the challenges in the International Monetary Fund (IMF) bailout.
Frankly speaking, the economy is in a dire strait, with government revenue dipping and donor support facing its own constraints.
Some naysayers have always shot down the government position that two external factors, COVID-19 and the Russia-Ukraine war, are responsible for the country’s economic challenges.
These naysayers, mostly the opposition NDC and their allies in the media, academia and civil society blame the challenges on the “incompetence” of the Akufo-Addo government in an attempt to equalise the Mahama government’s record that gave Ghanaians no choice than to humiliate the umbrella family in 2016.
Since the NPP took over the reins of government in 2017, the NDC has spared no effort to rally journalists, professors and some civil society groups to magnify the challenges as signs of the government failure in order to prepare the minds of the people for a regime change.
Whatever happened to the former Sanitation Minister is unfortunate and perhaps indefensible, it does not give a license to some media houses to call names and fabricate stories, and based on those stories give the platform to some commentators to call her a corrupt person while investigations are underway.
It is our hope that the National Media Commission (NMC) is not in a slumber but watching keenly and at the appropriate time call those reckless journalists and media houses to order.
Our politics has become very polarised beyond the usual normal to the extent that there is nothing like patriotism when it comes to the conversation about national development. Mark our word, the NDC Minority will go to Parliament on Monday with a pre-conceived position and placards describing the review in very negative terms.
This posture of our politicians, especially those from the NDC stable, is really counter-productive and unpatriotic and thus making it difficult for the proper scrutiny of the government economic policy.
We urge the NDC Minority for once on Monday to put nation first and praise the government where praise is due and criticise appropriately in order to make a clear departure from the past where the Minority has described economic policies as “good for nothing.”