{"id":33050,"date":"2014-07-19T16:45:17","date_gmt":"2014-07-19T16:45:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/4cd.e16.myftpupload.com\/?p=33050"},"modified":"2014-07-19T16:06:48","modified_gmt":"2014-07-19T16:06:48","slug":"finance-minister-must-set-realistic-budget-targets-economist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=33050","title":{"rendered":"Finance Minister must set realistic budget targets – Economist"},"content":{"rendered":"

Economist and Lecturer at the University of Ghana Business School, Godfred Alufa Bokpin<\/span><\/span> says Government\u2019s targets in the 2014 budget were dead on arrival.<\/p>\n

According to him it is obvious government was going to miss the budget target. \u2018\u2019Government\u2019s mid-year review of the budget was expected;\u2026<\/span><\/span>Two months into the budget [2014 budget] life we knew that those targets were not realistic; government wasn\u2019t going to achieve those targets. Is<\/span><\/span> as though one could say that they were dead on arrival,\u2019\u2019 he noted.<\/p>\n

He explained that the government\u2019s inflation target of 9.5 percent<\/span><\/span> amongst others could not be achieved, \u2018\u2019by the middle of the year because \u00a0the variants had exceeded the lower band\u2019\u2019.<\/p>\n

Speaking on the Citi FM<\/strong>\u2019s News Analysis Programme<\/span><\/span>, The Big Issues<\/strong>, Mr. Bokpin<\/span><\/span> said the mid-year review of the budget was expected.<\/p>\n

He cautioned the Finance Ministry and government<\/span><\/span> to set realistic targets<\/span> and projections. \u2018\u2019It doesn\u2019t send a good signal to the corporate and foreign investors that government<\/span> will set a target and by the middle of the year the variants have exceeded the lower band of that target,\u2019\u2019 he added.<\/p>\n

Finance Minsiter<\/span><\/span>, Seth Terkper on Wednesday presented a review of the 2014 budget to Parliament where<\/span><\/span> he also outlined a new supplementary budget to the house for approval.<\/p>\n

But Mr. Bokpin<\/span><\/span> said even the supplementary budget presented was one-sided, \u2018\u2019it is one-sided, it\u2019s basically expenditure<\/span><\/span>,\u2019\u2019 he opined.<\/p>\n

\u2018\u2019The Supplementary budget, the review and all of that is expected, but they are not actuals<\/span><\/span>; we must have clear strategy<\/span><\/span> to translate this budget into actuals<\/span><\/span>, otherwise next year we will still be here and even the revise target we may miss it,\u2019\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n

The Finance Minister asked parliament to approve a GH\u00a23,<\/span><\/span>196,855,671 supplementary budget estimate in conformity with Article 179(<\/span><\/span>8) of the Constitution for the rest of the year.<\/p>\n

Government<\/span><\/span> has reviewed its overall real GDP growth (including oil) target from<\/span><\/span> 8% to 7.1%.<\/p>\n

The non-oil real GDP growth has been revised from 7.4 percent to 6.6 percent.<\/p>\n

As part of the review of a number of macro-economic targets, inflation rate target for the year has been reviewed to 13.0\u00b12 percent from 9.5 \u00b12 percent.<\/p>\n

The overall budget deficit target has been revised from 8.5 percent of GDP to 8.8 percent and Gross International Reserves of not less than 3 months of import cover of goods and services.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

By: Evans Effah\/citifmonline.com\/Ghana<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Economist and Lecturer at the University of Ghana Business School, Godfred Alufa Bokpin says Government\u2019s targets in the 2014 budget were dead on arrival. According to him it is obvious government was going to miss the budget target. \u2018\u2019Government\u2019s mid-year review of the budget was expected;\u2026Two months into the budget [2014 budget] life we knew […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":32798,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[255,265,359,43,38,4,256],"class_list":["post-33050","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-airtel","tag-cardiff-university","tag-eye-care","tag-foresight-medical-center","tag-palaver-newspaper","tag-st-augustines-college","tag-telcos"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33050"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33050\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/32798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}