The Minority Spokesperson on finance, Dr. Anthony Akoto Osei has expressed pessimism about the future of the country as a result of the projects outlined by President John Dramani Mahama in his State of the Nation address on Thursday.
[contextly_sidebar id=”4Avdz7TpOwCL75aFVmrGphNwRxhZCMsW”]The President, in his address on Thursday, promised to solve the energy crisis and named a number of measures his government is currently undertaking to end it.
President Mahama also mentioned several other projects in other sectors that he intends to complete during his tenure in office.
However, according to the Minority, the President’s speech gave indications that there would be more spending than predicted as most of the promises were not captured in the budget statement presented by the Finance Minister in 2014.
This they believe will not be wise, considering the current fragile state of the economy.
Dr. Anthony Akoto Osei in an interview with Citi News said: “The issue is not promises. Ghana is facing a financial crisis which is affecting the energy sector. We are simply broke and so we have rationalize and they keep giving promises, raising our expectations when we know that it will not happen. If you follow the budget and you listen to the president, I wonder what the budget meant. Completely opposite. I’ll do this, I’ll do this. What that means is a revision downwards. But the way he is talking, it is as if he is even promising more than the budget said.”
The Former Finance Minister added that the number of inconsistencies that had characterised the government’s pronouncements on projection relation to the budget outlined by the Finance Minister suggested that it was not taking the current economic struggles seriously enough.
Finance Minister, Seth Terkper presenting the Budget for 2015
‘The budget was predicated on some assumptions. So if it made predictions on expenditure, they will be high, now we are told that they will go down. They are making more promises of bigger expenditure, It is not possible. It is a policy inconsistency. And I’m worried that the President is taking this economic problem not too seriously.”
By: Edwin Kwakofi/citifmonline.com/Ghana