What a government will do, where it will do it and how and when it will be done within the year are issues taken up in its financial statement, otherwise referred to as a budget. Budgets pointed the way forward to the ideological orientation of the regime and the kind of economic and social policies and programmes it wants to pursue.
This, among other things, is done by drawing up a list of priorities and making the appropriate quantum of resources available for the implementation of these policies and programs designed to improve the material conditions of the target group.
Yesterday, the Minister of Finance and Economic Planning, Dr Kwabena Duffour, presented the government�s budget for 2010 before Parliament in Accra. To all intents and purposes, the contents of the budget were as hope laden and inspiring as they were revealing.
From the background of an unprecedented budget deficit to Gross domestic Product (GDP) estimated at about 22 per cent, steadily rising inflation and fast depreciating currently and high cost of living, the immediate task of the Finance Minister was first to arrest those sharp declines, stabilise the macro-economic environment and then proceed from there to work for growth.
We are happy to note that by dint of fiscal discipline, the prudent management of the economy, discipline and austerity of the political leadership and hard work and dedication, the inflationary spiral has been halted and brought down, the fiscal deficit reduced substantially to about 10 per cent and plummeting value of the cedis halted and now appreciating against the major international currencies.
We find as laudable and heart-warming the pursuit in the 2010 budget of an array of pro-poor nationalistic and people-centered policies and programmes that will contribute to growing our economy and improving the material conditions our people. The decision to offer the physically challenged free education is highly commendable.
We are particularly elated at the decision of the government to provide an array of facilities to support our local farmers to produce more rice, poultry, livestock, cocoa, shea-nuts and other crops to feed our people and industries, as well as for export.
Currently, we are spending in the region of $600 million a year to import only rice, a commodity we can readily produce here for local consumption and for export.
We believe that in addition to the incentives outlined for our local farmers, including poultry and livestock farmers, the additional tariffs the government intends to impose on imported rice and poultry products will help address the imbalance in the pricing structure and make the local products as competitive, it not more competitive than the imported products.
We urged the government to follow through these by, among others encouraging the use of these local products in state institutions and on state occasions so that the requisite market will be guaranteed our local farmers to produce more. We also wish to urge all in the country to endeavour to increase their patronage of made-in-Ghana goods so that together we can grow the economy and improve our standard of living.
We commended the government for the moves to create jobs through the agricultural sector, the Greening Ghana Project, innovative road building projects and more. While we applaud the government for chalking these feats and preparing for more, we urged it not to relax the fiscal discipline and prudence it has sown so far, lest we relapse.
We salute the working people of this country for the immense sacrifices they have made and urge them to increase productively so that more resources will be generated to meet the requirements of the implementation of the Single Spine Salary Structure (SSSS) by the government, come January 2010 to enhance their standard of living and leave more for other areas of the economy.
Source: Daily Graphic
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