Covid-19: July’s Budget Will Reposition Ghana's Economy – Finance Minister

The Minister of Finance, Ken Ofori-Atta is hopeful that the new budget to be presented in Parliament in July 2020, will reposition Ghana’s economy to meet the global impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

He says discussions are already underway among Finance Ministers in Africa to find mechanisms to restore the gains achieved in the face of no disease outbreak.

Mr. Ofori-Atta had announced that the government will present a new budget to Parliament due to the current situation.

Speaking on The Point of View on Citi TV, the Minister said since the 2020 budget has been thrown out of gear due to the pandemic, there is the need for a new fiscal policy to reassess government expenditure and realign events to meet revenue target.

“It is a time of sacrifice and understanding. Sometimes I wonder if people have divorced themselves from the reality that this could lead to some serious debt. We will be uncomfortable running a system with a lot of inefficiencies but ours is to find ways of mitigating that. A lot of things come to play depending on the severity we are going to experience. But one has to keep the eye on the ball to make sure we do not derail all that we are doing.”

“A number of meetings we have had with the Finance Ministers in Africa are aimed at trying to reposition this whole global architecture to see if this is the most fit for purpose architecture. We are pushing for reliefs, we are pushing for postponement and that will allow us to make fiscal pace for us in order not to wipe out of the season. Fortunately, we are beginning to build a consensus globally as to how to manage this. We are just going to have to relook all the fundamental assumptions for the budget and signal to Parliament that come July, we should come with some more information and analysis so that we address the base,” he remarked.

---citinewsroom