On the authority of His Excellency the President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, and in keeping with the requirement under Article 179 of the 1992 Constitution of the Republic of Ghana, the Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta has presented the Budget Statement and Economic Policies of Government for 2019 to Parliament.
It is an abridged version of the 2019 Budget Statement.
"I would like to request the Hansard Department to capture the entire Budget Statement and Economic Policy," he said.
The theme of this year’s budget is “A Stronger Economy, for Jobs and Prosperity”.
He also submitted before the August House, the 2018 Annual Report on the Petroleum Funds, in accordance with Section 48 of the Petroleum Revenue Management Act, 2011 (Act 815), as amended.
The budget represents the third of four budget statements of the government. It, therefore, offers us an opportunity to take a mid-term review of the performance of the Government in managing the economy and how we intend to accelerate the programme of growing the economy, protecting the vulnerable, and creating jobs and prosperity for the Ghanaian people over the next financial year.
According to the Finance Minister, within two years of the change in government, below are just some of the problems fixed by the Akufo-Addo government.
● a change in the management of the economy; ● a change from macroeconomic instability to macroeconomic stability; ● a change from a rising debt-to-GDP ratio to a declining debt-to-GDP ratio; ● changing from a weak banking system to a strong, well capitalised and better supervised banking system; ● a change from taxation that undermines production; ● a change from a predominance of sole sourcing to competitive tendering in procurement; this changed has seen the Public Procurement Authority making total savings of GH¢1.8 billion from January 2017 to October 2018. It is important to recognized that not a single pesewa was saved all the years under the previous government until 2017. ● a change from the manual process of clearing goods, with its attendant corruption at the ports to a paperless process; ● a change to bring about a reduction in electricity tariff; ● a change from Dumsor to reliable power; ● a change in the access to and cost of education, to introduce free Senior High School education; ● a change from the abolition of teacher training allowances to a restoration of teacher training allowances; ● a change from Cash and Carry in NHIS to a functioning national health insurance system where arrears have been cleared; ● a change from the abolition of nursing training allowances to a restoration of nursing training allowances; ● a change to increase the share of the DACF to persons with disabilities from 2 percent to 3 percent; ● a change in a moribund private sector to a vibrant job creating private sector; ● a change from rising graduate unemployment to reducing graduate unemployment through programmes such as the 100,000 strong NABCO corps; ● a change from a dying colonial railway network system, that had been to a re-energised railway sector; ● a change from a stagnant agricultural sector to a revitalised agricultural sector under the Planting for Food and Jobs programme; ● a change from destructive galamsey activities to a regulated small-scale mining activities; ● a change from the opaque allocation of Ghana’s oil blocks to non-performing cronies to a transparent allocation of oil blocks to investors with the capacity to work the fields
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