Government to cut expenditure by up to 20% — Ken Ofori-Atta

Ken Ofori-Atta, the Minister of Finance, says the approved 2022 budget will include up to a 20 per cent cut in expenditure commitments across the board within the first quarter for covered entities benefitting from the budget.

The decision, which is in accordance with Section 25 of the Public Financial Management Act (PFMA) law and subject to revenue performance, was to strengthen expenditure management by ensuring that all expenditure commitments in 2022 will be adjusted to match revenue collection.

“This means that our fiscal consolidation agenda is not going to be only revenue-led but also expenditure focused,” he said at a press briefing in Accra on Wednesday.

The Government he said was also keen on cutting down expenditure, adding that the ministry has, for instance, started examining the financing of roads to ascertain how over lapses occurred in cost per kilometre among other variables, leading to high expenditure.

He, therefore, encouraged citizens to brace themselves up as the government explore other mechanisms of burden-sharing and to raise additional revenue for the betterment of all citizens through the Electronic- Levy.

Mr Ofori-Atta said that the government in addition to the E-Levy was committed to the implementation of other revenue measures, including exemption bill and property taxes, internally generated funds.

He indicated that restoring fiscal discipline and putting the public debt on a sustainable downward trajectory is a priority for Government to achieve fiscal consolidation.

The continent, he said, was under duress due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and “I think if you look at this covid period, literally all of Africa moved up by 10 percentage point from some average of 63 per cent to 73 per cent in their revenue to GDP ratio”.

“Similar to most economies, we are emerging from the devastating impact of the CoVID-19 pandemic. In spite of this, we do not face any imminent external imbalances,” he said.

GNA