A Deputy Minister of Finance, Charles Adu Boahen has shot down calls by the Minority in Parliament on government to draft a new budget to save the economy from further shocks.
“I really believe that it is a bit premature to start talking about re-doing the budget,” he said on the Citi Breakfast Show on Thursday.
The Minority on Wednesday called for a new budget to save the economy from current vulnerabilities triggered by the depreciation of the cedi.
Minority Spokesperson on Finance, Cassiel Ato Forson argued that “the rapid decline in the value of the cedi has thrown the economy in disarray and the projections surrounding it as contained in 2019 budget.”
He insisted that the current situation has undermined the confidence in the economy and is also “sending wrong signals to the investor community.”
“This calls for urgent steps to be taken by government to restore the economy. The starting point is that we should be considering a new budget which considers all the distortions and serious problems occasioned by the fall of the value of the cedi,” he added.
But responding to the call on the Citi Breakfast Show, Adu Boahen discounted such claims saying issues with the currency are being resolved.
“Already we’ve seen in the last week a recovery of the currency by over ten percent so most of the losses have been regained. And I believe that my Minister was being a prophet when he prophesized that in two weeks the currency will be back to normal. And we have already started seeing the recovery,” he added.
Adu Boahen said they are already aware of challenges that caused the cedi to depreciate noting that they are working assiduously to resolve the issue.
“We know why the currency was under pressure and we know how to get it back. It was under pressure because one of the key intervention tools the Bank of Ghana had at its disposal was sort of restrained…That has now been resolved. The bond happened yesterday, we’ve raised a sizable bond offering and all the speculators are selling off their dollars. The question here is has the fundamentals change? The answer is that the fundamentals are very strong. We haven’t had a stronger economy than what we see today in a long time,” the Deputy Finance Minister insisted.
