The Finance Minister, Ken Ofori Atta is asking Parliament for over six billion Ghana cedis in supplementary budget.
Presenting the midyear budget review to Parliament on Monday, July 29, Ofori Atta said the over GH¢78 billion approved by the House for 2019 will not be enough adding that the government needs an additional six billion cedis for the remainder of the year.
Mr. Speaker…the 2019 Appropriation of GH¢78,771,833,602.12 that was approved by this august House in November 2018 will not be adequate to cater for the additional programmed needs which will increase the total Appropriation to GH¢85,142,189,527.94.
“Government is, therefore, requesting Honourable Members to consider and approve an amount of GH¢6,370,355,925.82 as supplementary estimates to the original Appropriation of GH¢78,771,833,602.12 to bring the revised total Appropriation for the 2019 Fiscal Year to GH¢85,142,189,527.94.
Mr. Speaker, consistent with Article 179 (8) of the Constitution, the request for a supplementary estimate is necessitated by additional precautionary expenditures in response to regional security developments and the amortisation of contingent liabilities associated with take or pay contracts which have crystallized.”
The Finance Minister added that provisional data released by the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) in April 2019 show that overall real GDP growth (including oil) for 2018 was 6.3 percent, 0.7 percentage points higher than programmed, albeit lower than the 2017 performance of 8.1 percent.
According to him, Non-oil real GDP also increased from 4.6 percent in 2017 to 6.5 percent in 2018, and exceeded the target rate of 5.8 percent.
Source: Ghana/Starrfm.com.gh/103.5FM
