Budget statement was unimpressive - Minority

The budget statement presented to Parliament on Tuesday morning by Finance Minister, Seth Terkper is already provoking heated debate among Members of Ghana's Parliament.

The Minority’s Spokesperson on Finance Dr. Anthony Akoto Osei described it as unimpressive.

“In Economics, you don’t play games because it will catch up with you. In the budget of 2012, instead of saying the wage bill will be 7.5, they said 5.6. Couldn’t anyone in government tell us it was going to go that far?

If you go and put there that non tax revenue will be GHc2.2m when you know you cannot get it, who are you fooling?” the legislator lamented.

“Don’t over estimate; it will come back to haunt you… Inflation is single digit so what? Like the Nigerian Finance Minister said ‘Na inflation we go chop?' They should be realistic! [That is when] we can all sit down and find out what is going on because so far, from what I have heard, I’m not impressed,” he added.

Majority Chief Whip and MP for Asewase, Muntakar Mohammed vehemently disagreed with his colleague.

“We have seen several State of the Nation addresses where they are completely delinked with the budget. There was a lot of consistency trying to address what was mentioned in the state of the nation address. For me, if this is not something that is very important what do they want him to do?

With regards to financing projects, the Finance Minister only has to talk about things that had not been financed. It is Ghana first,” he stressed.