Budget for 2012 presented to parliament

Accra, Nov. 16, GNA – The Finance and Economic Planning Minister on Wednesday presented governments 2012 fiscal budget to parliament for approval.

The Budget, on the theme: “Infrastructural Development for Accelerated Growth and Job Creation,” recognized that the present state of the global economy presented the country with a number of unanticipated events and that a further deterioration of the global economic environment could have substantial spillovers to the Ghanaian economy.

Dr Duffuor said preliminary results from the West Africa Monitory Institute’s half year surveillance report showed that the overall economic performance remained strong with real the GDP expected to expand by 8.0 per cent in 2011 as compared to 7.7 per cent in 2010.

On the 2011 Macroeconomic Performance, he said, the GDP growth of 4.0 per cent in 2009, 7.7 per cent in 2010 and 13.6 per cent in 2011; made significant reduction of fiscal deficit from 6.6 per cent of GDP in 2008 on cash basis (14.5 per cent of GDP – old series) to 2.0 per cent of GDP as at September 2011.

He said inflation which was 18.1 per cent at the end of 2008 now stands at 8.40 per cent in September, 2011 with significant reduction in the yield of the 91-day money market instrument from 24.67 per cent in 2008 to 9.1 per cent in September 2011, making it the lowest recorded money market rate in decades.

Dr Duffuor said Gross International Reserves of US$4.98 billion was recorded in October 2011 exceeding 3.0 months of import cover of goods and services compared to reserves of US$2.0 billion at the end of December 2008 which could barely cover 2 months of imports.

On major achievements of the economy, he said, real GDP growth rate of 13.6 per cent was made compared to a growth target of 14.4 per cent and the actual growth out turn of 7.7 per cent in 2010.

Dr Duffour said the 2011 provisional GDP growth translates into a real GDP of GH¢27.49 billion and a nominal GDP of GH¢56.28 billion.