Ghana government requests GH¢1.8b for supplementary budget

The Ghana government has requested for a supplementary budget of GH¢1.8 billion to finance expenditure.

The Minister of Finance, Seth Terkper went to Parliament today to request approval for GH¢1,888,203,387 as supplementary estimates for the 2016 financial year.

He argued that the supplementary budget was necessitated by both domestic and global developments.

He indicated that Parliament’s legislative work in fiscal, financial and monetary management had helped a clear turn-around story for a well planned economy for the country.

According to Mr. Terkper several domestic and global challenges didn’t hinder the government’s determination to change course.

“Strategic focus enabled the government to pursue development projects. The launch of home grown policies which are now part of the IMF programme were designed to achieve fiscal consolidation, address short term vulnerabilities, reduce a high budget deficit…. and stabilize the rise in a post-HIPC public debt,” he said, adding that the government can achieve that through management of prudent fiscal and monetary policies.

According to the Minister, provisional fiscal data up to end of December 2015 show that total revenue and grants were higher than the total budgets by 5 per cent.

Highlighting some improvements in the country’s economic indicators, he pointed out that the performances resulted in a cash deficit of 6.3 per cent of GDP, which he says is much better than the budget target of 7.3 per cent and 10.2 per cent in 2014.

“At 0.2 per cent of GDP at 2015, the primary budget balance that shows ability to service loans for development was a surplus for the first time in over a decade. GDP also grew by 3.9 per cent at the end of 2015, better than the projected 3.5 per cent,” He said.

By Emmanuel K. Dogbevi

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