Today’s budget statement is significant in varied ways. Although it is not the maiden one to be presented by the incumbent political administration it nonetheless dwarfs the previous one in terms of reach and influence.
It comes on the heels of the launch of key flagship manifesto projects of President Akufo-Addo’s government. The free SHS project has been launched and operational even after the doomsday prophets sought to shoot it down with their negative projections.
The district factories and dam projects are on the drawing board awaiting the next crucial stages to take off especially today’s budget statement.
The quality of today’s budget will therefore determine the success or otherwise of the projects. The extension of the central spine of the railway system to Paga – another key aspect of the Akufo-Addo’s government will definitely find ample space in the statement; the funding of which will be very much an interesting piece of information for Ghanaians.
Even before today, the press conference-inclined NDC has chosen to predict the contents of the budget statement creating a very gloomy picture of the next fiscal year and how in their estimation things are going to be very difficult.
It is heart-wrenching when educated persons, indeed society’s elite lie through their teeth about fiscal issues.
We are constrained to recall Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia’s warning that whoever plays propaganda with economic figures will soon be exposed. The NDC have played this game for too long and having failed to yield dividends from it, save burnt fingers, they continue to tread on the same tangent.
For a former minister in the NDC regime to seek to tell Ghanaians that what befell the country in the 80s could be set to revisit us again is indicative of desperation. He was referring to the shortage of food and other items in the country in the 80s – a time when the worst migration of Ghanaians to Nigeria and other countries occurred.
The PNDC which metamorphosed into the NDC as we have it today, was the junta in place. What then is the former minister seeking to achieve by such lies?
Such prophecies of doom do not bespeak well about the quality of persons who managed the affairs of the country under the previous regime. That is the reason Ghana was left in a state of hopelessness at the time of their exit.
The takeoff of the free SHS project and the near resolution of the dumsor challenge is enough to give the government a thumbs-up. Assuming the reins of government at a time when the coffers were virtually empty; having been ransacked by an outgoing team, it was not surprising when the NDC asked where President Akufo-Addo was going to get money to implement the free SHS programme. Now that it has come to pass they are predicting that it would collapse.
Today’s budget statement would befuddle them beyond words and their reactions can be conjectured even before the Finance Minister is done with his presentation.
The negative tag they would christen the budget statement with, should tell us how much they hate the innovations which are changing the fate of the country.