<\/p>\n
Seth Terkper <\/strong><\/p>\n Former Minister of Finance and Economic Planning during the Mahama-led NDC administration, Seth Terkper, has said the current fiscal deficit is widening and not even the GRA revenue can help resolve it.<\/p>\n The government is working hard to introduce the Electornic transaction levy (E-Levy) as part of the measures to reduce the deficit but Mr. Terkper\u2019s NDC has become a stumbling block in the way of getting the E-levy passed.<\/p>\n Speaking at a forum in Accra yesterday, the former Finance Minister did not say he supports the passage of the E-Levy but was still complaining about the deficit.<\/p>\n \u201cThe deficit is 55 per cent but they are supposed to collect 80, we are talking about 30 extra within that 30 extra, or let\u2019s say 25 extra because they did about 57,\u201d he said and added that \u201cSo within the extra amount that they are supposed to collect is the benchmark because the values were supposed to go up so that they can collect, so as long as we don\u2019t take a decision on that it is affecting the budget, and it gradually sending uncertainty to the market because they are saying hey! You have done a budget,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n Though some people have criticised Ken Ofori-Atta\u2019s decision to cut budget expenditure by 20%, without recourse to Parliament, Mr. Tekper was of the view that, this is not the first time a finance minister has taken such action without parliamentary approval.<\/p>\n \u201cYou know the minister just announced 20% reduction. Are we reviewing budget mid-year in January already? Because to cut expenditure by 20% is not a small amount of money. It is about 27 billion out of the 135 or 137 billion, and that is a significant amount of money. It didn\u2019t go to Parliament. It is not just this government. You remember, when we read a budget in 2015 and then crude oil prices fell by March, Former President John Dramani Mahama was sending me to Parliament to go and explain to the nation, that was March, so I am not faulting that, it\u2019s being said in January, they should tell us that a real problem with the fiscal situation,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n With the deficit growing wide, Mr. Terkper also asked the government to take a second look at the Free SHS policy because it is \u201cnot physically sustainable.\u201d<\/p>\n According to the ex-minister, judging from the amount of money spent on the Free SHS, it will always influence government\u2019s fiscal deficit.<\/p>\n \u201c\u2026When you are in that seat others who see the policy as popular for the government, therefore would normally not agree with you, including other colleague ministers and the rest. But it gets to a point where you must because, when you correct first the fiscal situation and then you correct the policy, it will even not be sustainable within the consensus that the nation will agree that it is sustainable.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\t<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Seth Terkper Former Minister of Finance and Economic Planning during the Mahama-led NDC administration, Seth Terkper, has said the current fiscal deficit is widening and not even the GRA revenue can help resolve it. The government is working hard to introduce the Electornic transaction levy (E-Levy) as part of the measures to reduce the deficit […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":765543,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[187],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-765542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/765542","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=765542"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/765542\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=765542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=765542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=765542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}