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Business News of Saturday, 30 March 2019

Source: classfmonline.com

Government engaging in financial indiscipline – Adongo

Isaac Adongo, Member of Parliament for Bolga Central play videoIsaac Adongo, Member of Parliament for Bolga Central

Ghana is currently, worse off than the period when the oil-producing West African nation went to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for the bailout, opposition lawmaker Isaac Adongo, has said.

The Bolgatanga MP said financial indiscipline on the part of the Akufo-Addo administration has ballooned the total wage bill of the GHS14billion left behind by the National Democratic Congress (NDC) administration to GHS22billion.

He told Parliament that if the government does not halt the indiscipline, the GHS22b wage bill would be doubled by the year 2020.

His comments follow an address on the economy the Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta delivered to parliament Thursday March 28.

Mr Ofori-Atta among other things ,told the legislature that Discussions that took place during the recent visit of the World Bank Vice President for Africa, Dr Hafez Ghanem, to Ghana, depict that the Bretton Woods institution believes in the Ghana Beyond Aid agenda of the Akufo-Addo administration.

He said: “Our recent success in the Eurobond demonstrates the clear confidence that the international community has in the hard work that we have done. We know that this confidence resonates with our vision of Ghana Beyond Aid.

“The World Bank’s Vice-President for the African Region visited Ghana between the 24th and 26th of March 2019. The objective of the visit was to discuss with the government and other stakeholders the World Bank’s assisted projects for Ghana and explore areas for future collaboration.

“The discussions centred on efforts to mobilise funds for economic transformation towards the achievements of the Ghana beyond aid and all the SDGs.”

However, commenting on this address, Mr Adongo said: “We are worse than when we entered the IMF In 2016 our total wage bill was GHS 14billion. Today we are dealing with GHS 22billion, an expansion of 53 per cent in the public sector. On the average we are adding 21 per cent of our pubic wage bill every year.

“If this continues by the year 2020 we would have doubled our wage bill that we (NDC) left.”

He added: “That is the height of indiscipline.”