{"id":1033397,"date":"2022-03-24T19:49:15","date_gmt":"2022-03-24T19:49:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/03\/24\/finance-minister-announces-stringent-fiscal-measures-to-restore-economy\/"},"modified":"2022-03-24T19:49:15","modified_gmt":"2022-03-24T19:49:15","slug":"finance-minister-announces-stringent-fiscal-measures-to-restore-economy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/03\/24\/finance-minister-announces-stringent-fiscal-measures-to-restore-economy\/","title":{"rendered":"Finance Minister announces stringent fiscal measures to restore economy"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\n Accra, March 24, GNA -Finance Minister, Mr Ken Ofori-Atta, has announced a series of fiscal measures aimed to reduce the deficit, stem rising inflation and slow the depreciation of the cedi.<\/p>\n
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The measures include a cut in discretionary spending by an additional 10 per cent, in addition to a 20 per cent expenditure cut announced in January and a reduction in government ministers and heads of state agencies’ salaries by 30 per cent.<\/div>\n
The government is also imposing a moratorium on vehicle purchases and foreign travel except in special circumstances and a 50 per cent cut in fuel coupon allocations.<\/div>\n
“The difficulties we are facing in Ghana are not peculiar to Ghana,” he said, citing the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine on the economy.<\/div>\n
“We are confident these measures will address the short term challenges our nation is facing.”<\/div>\n
Inflation has risen to a six-year high of 15.7 per cent while the cedi has depreciated about 15.6 per cent against the dollar.<\/div>\n
Mr Ofori-Atta said the Government decided to take the measures to ensure the achievement of the fiscal deficit target of 7.4 per cent of GDP for 2022.<\/div>\n
However, he said the unyielding stance of the Minority in Parliament against the E-levy was gravely affecting investor confidence and the capacity of government to implement its programmes and settle our debts, triggering a downgrading by credit rating agencies, and now leaving the cedi vulnerable as we could not access the International Capital Market.<\/div>\n
He urged parliament to fast-track the passage of the E-levy.<\/div>\n
On the depreciation of the cedi, Mr Ofori-Atta said the government would conclude an external financing arrangement with some international banks of up to $2 billion in the next two to six weeks to shore up the cedi.<\/div>\n
The Minister ruled out going to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a bailout.<\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Accra, March 24, GNA -Finance Minister, Mr Ken Ofori-Atta, has announced a series of fiscal measures aimed to reduce the deficit, stem rising inflation and slow the depreciation of the cedi. The measures include a cut in discretionary spending by an additional 10 per cent, in addition to a 20 per cent expenditure cut announced […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1033399,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[1082,1963,457,3367,1145,1223,5152,6600],"class_list":["post-1033397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-announces","tag-economy","tag-finance","tag-fiscal","tag-measures","tag-minister","tag-restore","tag-stringent"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1033397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1033397"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1033397\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1033397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1033397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1033397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}