Terkper not presenting revised budget – Bagbin

Majority Leader Alban Bagbin has denied reports that Finance Minister Seth Terkper will be presenting a revised budget to Parliament Thursday March 12, 2015.

Mr Bagbin told Citi FM’s Richard Sky in an interview Wednesday that Mr Terkper will just be in Parliament to explain to the house the implications that the falling price of crude oil will have on the Ghanaian economy.

According to him, claims by the Minority that Mr Terkper will be presenting a totally new budget to replace the 2015 budget presented in November last year was wrong.

The price of crude has plummeted from the 100-dollar zone to below 50 dollars.

President John Mahama said a few months ago that the sharp fall in the price crude means Ghana will lose about half a billion dollars in its projected oil revenue as presented in the budget read to Parliament in late last year.

Speaking to the Ghanaian community in Germany during his two-day state visit in January, President John Mahama said: “Increasingly, oil and gas is playing a role in our revenues.”

“From 2011 when we started producing oil, it’s been a small part of our revenue, it’s been about 6 percent of our total revenue, but every year it has continued to grow and so this year we were expecting about $1.2 billion from oil revenues but look at what has happened, the price of crude oil has gone down and from the estimates that we have, we are going to lose about $500 million in oil revenues coming into the economy and so that’s the problem when your economy is based on primary commodity exports,” Mr Mahama said.

He added: “That’s why we need to add value to our economy by ensuring that we add value to some of the primary products that we export and so when it comes to the oil and gas sector, I have more faith in the gas than in the oil because with the gas we can build a downstream petrochemical industry and be able to multiply the effects it has on our economy.”