Government has stated that its policies have improved the business environment.
It said the private sector has also responded by increasing jobs.
Presenting the 2019 budget to Parliament in Accra yesterday, Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta said: “Based on SSNIT data, the private sector added 208,620 formal jobs in the first 10 months of 2018, an increase on the 197,000 formal jobs registered in 2017. We have resourced the Ghana Statistical Service and the Ministry of Employment and Labour Relations to develop a more robust system to track employment on a quarterly basis.”
“Government is also doing its part on job creation. Over the period 2017 and 2018, the Ministry of Finance granted financial clearance to various agencies to recruit 88,719 Ghanaians into critical sectors of agriculture, health, and education to enable us to improve service delivery.
“In addition, the Nation Builders Corps (NABCO), a three-year transitional job opportunity for young graduates, has enrolled 100,000 young graduates to support the delivery of critical public services.”
IMF exit plans
He said as Ghana is preparing to exit the IMF’s ECF programme by December 2018, government has also instituted measures to ensure irreversibility of the macroeconomic gains the country had made.
“These include efforts at legislating a fiscal responsibility rule to cap the fiscal deficit to no more than 5% of GDP as part of measures to promote budget credibility and fiscal sustainability; strictly enforcing the PFM Act to promote efficient and effective public financial management; continuing with the zero central bank financing arrangement with the BoG to curb fiscal dominance as part of measures to rein in on inflation; maximising domestic resource mobilization and increasing tax revenue-to-GDP ratio to levels in line with Ghana’s peer lower middle-Income countries.
Government, he revealed, was implementing expenditure efficiency and rationalisation measures to increase efficiency in public spending and free more fiscal space for growth oriented and job-creating programmes.
“Government would enforce the Public Procurement Act and ensure sole-sourcing is minimized to promote competition and efficiency in public spending, thereby promoting value for money and instituting a risk management framework to mitigate macro-fiscal risks. In view of this, a Fiscal Risks Unit has been established at the Ministry of Finance,” he added.
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