THE PARROTS

Finance minister Seth Terpker has requested an additional amount of Ȼ1.8 billion to be approved by Parliament to support the budget for the 2016 financial year. The minister presented the 2016 mid-year performance of the economy to the House on Monday, July, 25. He said several global developments did not fundamentally change the course of government’s policy direction. Mr. Terkper touted progress in various sectors including education, health, agriculture and the economy. Click here for the full supplementary budget statement read by the Minister.

Finance Minister Seth Terkper says the government has tamed its taste for spending money it does not have. He said the Budget deficit which reached historic levels of 12 per cent of GDP in 2012, has been cut significantly. “The government is living within its means,” he told Parliament Monday, July 25, 2016, whilst presenting the supplementary budget to the House. He said despite a slight overrun of 182.6 million cedis on wage bill, “general expenditures are being contained to take account of the likely shortfalls in oil revenues.” Citing provisional data for January to May this year, the Finance Minister said, “the cash fiscal deficit was 2.5% of GDP against a 2.2% target.” These figures, he said, compared favourably with the same period last year. “The practical meaning of the annual decline in [budget] deficit is that government is living within its means,” he said. Mr. Terkper told Parliament that this is buoyed by the fact that government is borrowing less fr