New Budget will Realign the economy with Global Covid-19 Impact – Finance Minister

The Minister of Finance, Ken Ofori-Atta has expressed optimism in new budget to be presented in Parliament in July 2020, to reposition Ghana’s economy to address the global impact of the COVID-19 outbreak.

The minister noted that, discussions are already underway among Finance Ministers in Africa to find mechanisms to restore the gains achieved in the face of no disease outbreak.
Mr. Ofori-Atta had earlier announced that the government will present a new budget to Parliament due to the pandemic.

In an interview with Accra based Citi TV, the Minister said the outbreak has the propensity to derail the economy and cause huge debt, hence the need to put in place proper mechanisms.

“It is a time of sacrifice and understanding. Sometimes I wonder if people have divorced themselves from the reality that this could lead to some serious debt. We will be uncomfortable running a system with a lot of inefficiencies but ours is to find ways of mitigating that. A lot of things come to play depending on the severity we are going to experience. But one has to keep the eye on the ball to make sure we do not derail all that we are doing.”

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“A number of meetings we have had with the Finance Ministers in Africa are aimed at trying to reposition this whole global architecture to see if this is the most fit for purpose architecture. We are pushing for reliefs, we are pushing for postponement and that will allow us to make fiscal pace for us in order not to wipe out of the season.  

"Fortunately, we are beginning to build a consensus globally as to how to manage this. We are just going to have to relook all the fundamental assumptions for the budget and signal to Parliament that come July, we should come with some more information and analysis so that we address the base,” he added.