{"id":1212540,"date":"2022-09-28T12:25:51","date_gmt":"2022-09-28T12:25:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/09\/28\/government-meets-fiscal-deficit-target-of-5-3-of-gdp-current-expenditure-contained\/"},"modified":"2022-09-28T12:25:51","modified_gmt":"2022-09-28T12:25:51","slug":"government-meets-fiscal-deficit-target-of-5-3-of-gdp-current-expenditure-contained","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/09\/28\/government-meets-fiscal-deficit-target-of-5-3-of-gdp-current-expenditure-contained\/","title":{"rendered":"Government meets fiscal deficit target of 5.3% of GDP, current expenditure contained"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Government met its fiscal deficit target of 5.3% of Gross Domestic Product in the first seven months of 2022.<\/p>\n

According to the Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta, the overall fiscal deficit amounted to \u00a231.1 billion (5.3% of GDP), against a target of \u00a231.2 billion (5.3% of GDP).<\/p>\n

Again, the corresponding primary balance for the period was a deficit of \u00a27.6 billion (1.3% of GDP), against a deficit target of \u00a27.8 billion (1.3% of GDP).<\/p>\n

Mr. Ofori-Atta said the current year expenditure has also largely been contained owing to the operationalisation of expenditure cuts announced since March 2022.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are on course with expenditure rationalisation efforts, and will continue to enforce strict adherence to these measures across all MDAs, while ensuring efficient delivery of public services\u201d.<\/p>\n

He added that the Ghana Revenue Authority has intensified its efforts to shore up domestic revenue mobilisation, particularly in relation to the enforcement of compliance measures.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe increased visibility of GRA officials at shopping malls and various commercial establishments and at our borders across the country is in pursuit of meeting our revenue objectives\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cSuch exercises form part of an ongoing drive to ensure we take significant steps forward in remedying long-standing challenges with domestic revenue mobilization, indiscipline, corruption and leakages. Of course, heightened tax compliance and increased tax-audit exercises will continue to be complemented by policy initiatives that allow us to tap into a wider pool of taxpayers in the years ahead\u201d, he explained further.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Towards this therefore, Mr. Ofori-Atta said, government is looking at areas around the Electronic Transaction Levy (E-Levy) to ensure its effective implementation.<\/p>\n

Since quarter 1, 2022, the government has cut discretionary expenditures in the budget by 30%.<\/p>\n

In addition, it announced a number of expenditure measures to keep public spending in line with its tightening economic conditions including restraints on purchase of new vehicles and a moratorium on non-statutory travel.<\/p>\n

The revised deficit target announced by Mr. Ofori-Atta earlier on was 6.6% of GDP and a primary balance of 0.4% of GDP.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Government met its fiscal deficit target of 5.3% of Gross Domestic Product in the first seven months of 2022. According to the Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta, the overall fiscal deficit amounted to \u00a231.1 billion (5.3% of GDP), against a target of \u00a231.2 billion (5.3% of GDP). Again, the corresponding primary balance for the period was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1212485,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[4442,3431,17466,268,3367,1984,1090,547,1922],"class_list":["post-1212540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-contained","tag-current","tag-deficit","tag-expenditure","tag-fiscal","tag-gdp","tag-government","tag-meets","tag-target"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1212540","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=1212540"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1212540\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1212540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1212540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1212540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}