Economist, Dr. Lord Mensah has criticized the almost 2 billion cedis budget deficit in the advance expenditure appropriation presented by the Minister of Finance, Seth Terkper.<\/p>\n
Parliament, on Thursday, October 20, approved the 10.99 billion cedis request by the Finance Minister.<\/p>\n
This also came after several deliberations both at the Finance Committee level and on the floor of the House.<\/p>\n
But speaking to Citi Business News<\/strong> on the development, Dr. Lord Mensah explained that the development is worrying as government\u2019s borrowing is not committed to reflect in growth of the economy.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you look at the two billion cedis deficit, as we stand now just in the first quarter, it means that whatever money you are going to raise on the international market, if its 1.8 billion or whatever billion use that to service only the interest,\u201d he stated.<\/p>\n \u201cBut you\u2019re supposed to borrow to grow\u2026Borrowing has to go with growth; because any country that incurs more debt the country grows,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n Meanwhile the government intends to rake in some 8 billion cedis in revenue for the first three months of next year.<\/p>\n Also, a greater percentage of the expenditure for the first quarter of 2017 is expected to be allocated to recurrent expenditure.<\/p>\n This is also scheduled to involve salaries and allowances for public sector workers.<\/p>\n However citing instances from across the globe, the Economist maintained that Ghana\u2019s inability to develop infrastructure with the amounts borrowed will have dire consequences for the country.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you go to the Americas, their debt level is about 1.25% of their GDP and you go to Japan its about 200% the reason why they don\u2019t complain so much about their debt level is that they have a lot to show for they have grown to a point where the infrastructure in place can service this debt,\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSo if you\u2019re borrowing to just service interest alone I don\u2019t think there\u2019s room for growth and that is the main problem this country is likely to face,\u201d Dr. Mensah stated.<\/p>\n –<\/p>\n By: Pius Amihere Eduku\/citibusinessnews.com\/Ghana<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Economist, Dr. Lord Mensah has criticized the almost 2 billion cedis budget deficit in the advance expenditure appropriation presented by the Minister of Finance, Seth Terkper. Parliament, on Thursday, October 20, approved the 10.99 billion cedis request by the Finance Minister. This also came after several deliberations both at the Finance Committee level and on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":230178,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[121,32,171,11],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n