Seth Terkper, former finance minister
Former Finance Minister, Seth Terkper has said that the NPP government cannot continue to blame COVID-19 for the country’s economic challenges.
According to him, the government continues to increase its expenditure and turn around to blame COVID-19 despite a $6 billion revenue flow during the pandemic.
He said Ghana should move beyond using primary balance (excluding net interest payments on public debt) as a basis for saying that the economy is doing well.
He argued that the best way to determine whether the economy is doing well is to use the fiscal balance (the difference between a government’s revenues and its expenditures).
“COVID came and we blamed everything on COVID but we had $6 billion coming in during the same pandemic. And I’m talking about American dollars.
“We are on a slippery ground if we continue to use primary balance as the basis of saying that the economy is doing well when we should have used the fiscal balance to be able to make a proper assessment.
"This is because primary balance excludes interest payments on our public debts which we all know is very huge now,” Seth Terkper said at the PFMTax Africa media dialogue on Ghana’s IMF programme.
