Budget 2021: Minority still has a fighting chance - Fiifi Kwetey

A former Deputy Minister of Finance, Fiifi Kwetey, has maintained that there is still a fighting chance for the Minority in Parliament to cause major changes to the 2021 budget presented to the House.

Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu, the caretaker Minister of Finance, on Friday, March 12, 2021, delivered the government's budget for the year, doing so in the absence of minister-designate, Ken Ofori-Atta, who is outside the country for medical reasons.

Following that, and as is the practice, Parliament debated the budget and on Friday, March 19, 2021, passed it after a head count put the votes at 137 to 134 votes, shooting down the intentions by the Minority to reject it.

Explaining why they failed to live to their intention of rejecting the budget, John Abdulai Jinapor, Member of Parliament for Yapei/Kasawgu, said that some of their members were battling coronavirus while one other was burying his mother on the same day hence their inability to be in Parliament to vote.

But, the former MP for Ketu South, Fifi Kwetey, has said that there is still a chance to register their intentions when the Committees of Parliament

"It’s just a vote on the principles of the budget. We are now going to go into the real details where committees are going to submit details for scrutiny and so there is actually still an opportunity to still be able to do things about it. So I don’t completely agree that everything is lost considering all that’s going to happen between now and the final appropriation," he explained.

Fifi Kwetey made this known when he appeared on the Saturday, March 20, 2021, edition of Newsfile, a news analysis program on JoyNews.