The Minister of Finance, Ken Ofori-Atta, is scheduled to present the government’s 2024 Annual Budget Statement and Economic Policy to Parliament on Wednesday, November 15, 2023.
Ahead of the presentation, there have been calls for the government to significantly reduce its expenditure to rescue the ailing economy.
The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Dalex Finance and Leasing Company Limited, Kenneth Thompson, issued a warning last week of a looming economic downturn in 2024 if the government continues its current pattern of ever-increasing and large expenditures.
In an interview with Umaru Sanda Amadu on Face to Face on Citi TV, Mr. Thompson said: “As a country, what we must focus on now is how to protect the poor. If you talk about cutting expenditure, there’s a long list of things we can cut, but we need to protect the poor, and we need to focus on health, education, infrastructure, food, and everything else because we are in a very bad place.”
Meanwhile, the Finance Minister has indicated that long-term relief measures for the victims of the Akosombo Dam spillage will be taken into consideration during the formulation of the 2024 budget.
Addressing journalists after touring the affected communities a few days ago, Mr. Ofori-Atta mentioned that while the government had already provided some relief items to the victims, they were committed to doing more, and this commitment would be reflected in next year’s budget.
“We have mobilized a few things that we would like to share but I think we are also in the budget season and therefore it will not just be numbers that we are working on but true feelings in the field and therefore the need to look at these social interventions in a real way. We will certainly give this an expression immediately and also in the budget,” he stated.
