Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta, will deliver the 2024 budget and economic plan today, November 15, 2023.
This will be the last budget reading under the Akufo-Addo-led administration.
Commenting on what to expect from the budget reading, Member of Parliament for Tamale South, Haruna Iddrisu, said it is too late for President Akufo-Addo to salvage the economy.
According to him, the ruling New Patriotic Party had spent the past seven years wrecking the nation’s economy, and it is practically impossible for them to correct their mistakes in just one fiscal year.
Speaking on Joy FM’s Super Morning Show, the former Minority Leader explained that it will take a miracle for such a feat to be accomplished thus urged Ghanaians to be measured in their expectations ahead of the budget reading.
“If you use seven years to create this distress how are you going to use one year to redeem? Practically impossible and therefore your expectation should be one where too little too late, he simply has no time to redeem given the monumental damage they have done to our economic score card whether it’s inflation ending 2022 at more than 50%, today around 40%, interest rate unacceptably high, depreciation of the cedi,” he said.
Haruna Iddrisu stated that while he had hoped that the budget would chart a path that will lead to private sector driven economic growth in the country, suggestions of more revenue mobilization and new taxes suggest otherwise.
He urged Ghanaians to gird up their loins for the fiscal year ahead.
He continued, “We will reel under some extreme hardship. Poverty as reported by ISSER and many other international bodies including the world bank has increased and post COVID, we’re not seeing the kind of economic interventions that will spur growths and therefore growth has stunted over the years since 2020 and it’s likely to remain same.”
ALSO READ:
