Terkper Only ‘Campaigned’ Budget Presentation – Nitiwul

He believes Mr. Terkper could have done a better presentation.“I think that the Finance Minister could have done much better; especially when he started mentioning campaign projects. I felt that he had diluted the essence of what we have been called for. We have been called essentially to look at supplementary budgets. Tells you that government may have had some resources and they wanted to deploy that amount of money to shore up themselves and we thought that the Finance Minister will give us exactly what it is and leave it to Parliament to do the debate and then approve it or not approve it and then it got to a stage where the Members were shouting propaganda and campaign.”

“The areas we thought that government will be looking at the pressing issues, the energy issues. We want to know what government will have to do to assure the people of Ghana that between now and the end of the year how you will resolve that problem… You wake up and you have 12 hours of lights off..where are you getting get the resources to buy crude?”

Gov’t is broke

Highlighting some challenges facing the economy, Mr. Nitiwul reiterated that government is broke as a result of constantly borrowing from international donors.

“There is no money.. The biggest problem this government is facing is that we have over borrowed. We overestimated the amount of money we will get from crude and we kept on borrowing but we are only getting very minimal revenue from crude today and we are faced with the stuck reality of paying interest loan which has become the second biggest item on the budget.”

The Minister on Monday presented the 2016 supplementary budget to Parliament.

The presentation, which highlighted government’s fiscal plans for the remaining six months of 2016, also emphasized government’s plans to deal with the budget deficit and overruns.

-citifmonline