Mid-Year review to raise more revenues to complete government's agenda

The mid-year budget review which will be delivered by Mr Ken Ofori-Atta, the Finance Minister, on July 29, will among others focus on augmenting government revenues to fund the outstanding coordinated programmes of social and economic policies.

Mr Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, the Information Minister, who announced this a media briefing in Accra on Sunday, said the 1992 Constitution requires every administration to prepare a coordinated programme of social and economic policies with which it will govern.

He said the annual budget programme were designed to fund and execute a part of that programme each fiscal year.

He said though the administration believes it was steadily executing its commitments to Ghanaians, the mid-year budget review will afford it the opportunity to take a second look at revenue availability to execute the remaining programmes, especially infrastructural development.

The Minister said revenue mobilization, which was highlighted in the 2019 Budget, will remain a key feature in the mid-year review.

This, he said, was to ensure that government mobilises sufficient resources to fully deliver on the outstanding commitments.

"It is refreshing to see the vigour with which Ghanaians have responded to the President’s call to be citizens and not spectators and consequently notes calls for government to deliver on some national issues with dispatch.

"This same vigour will hopefully be translated into our revenue mobilisation efforts to ensure that we fully fund and fully execute outstanding programmes," the Minister said.

Mr Oppong Nkrumah said government has already commenced efforts to cut some avoidable expenses, key among them, is the ongoing work on cutting out capacity charges for power that we did not consume.

He said it is the expectation of government that, the cutting out avoidable expenses while shoring up revenues, would create more fiscal space to fully fund and execute the outstanding programmes in the medium-term expenditure framework.