2023 Budget: Government missed opportunity to restructure economy – Prof. Prempeh

The Executive Director of the Ghana Center for Democratic Development (CDD-Ghana), Professor Henry K. Prempeh, says the government missed an opportunity to restructure the country’s economy, governance and political system with the 2023 budget.

Speaking at a roundtable discussion organised by the Citizen’s Coalition in Accra on Thursday, December 15, 2022, Professor Prempeh said certain allocations in the 2023 Budget do not indicate that the country is in a crisis where irrelevant expenditure will not be prioritised.

“When you are in crisis, you can do exceptional things, I don’t see anything in the budget to suggest that this is a crisis and that this is being done as an emergency measure,” Professor Prempeh said.

Professor Prempeh accused the government of taking decisions targeted solely at securing the US$3 billion loan facility from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

According to him, the government must make difficult decisions and cut away vanity projects so they can channel funds into more beneficial projects for Ghanaians in the long term.

“This is not the time for vanity projects but we have preserved a vanity project in the form of the cathedral. I was expecting that this being a crisis period, we will reflect on that decision and say even if this is sensible to do at all – and I do not think so, that it will not be the appropriate period or we will change the idea to something else. There is a lot that we can still do with that site which can make sense.

“So generally it is a missed opportunity in terms of seeing this as a crisis moment and seeing it as a moment to reset the button. I think we have not quite done that. It looks to me that it is purely an emergency thing targeted at the IMF to approve a loan as opposed to something that is going deep into the structure and our governance,” Professor H. Kwasi Prempeh admonished in assessment.