‘It is mischievous’ - Peprah
2001 budget – Osafo-Maafo bites
Move for HIPC bad
Review rates
One dies, 5 sustain injuries in shoot-out
Truth Commission on AFRC/NDC eras
2001 budget is half-baked - NDC
Massive probe begins
House cleaning Budget - After 20 years of mess
Selormey challenges Duffour, Maafo - over 900b-cedi stealth cash withdrawals
The former NDC Deputy Minister of Finance, Mr victor Selormey, has challenged the Minister of Finance, Mr Yaw Osafo-Maafo’s statement that the former government withdrew 900 billion cedis from government coffers in the last quarter (October to December) of 2000, reports The Ghanaian Chronicle.
But in a swift reaction, Selormey, who spoke to journalists soon after listening to the Minister outline government’s economic policy for the year, said Osafo-Maafo’s statement cannot be true adding he is prepared to put his reputation on the line.
He insisted that there was never any occasion when government ever decided to withdraw such an amount from the coffers in the last quarter.
Moses Asaga, also a deputy Minister of Finance in the former government and now the Shadow Minister of Finance, also insisted that the former government did nothing of the sort.
“We dispute the figure the Minister of Finance has just indicated. We will to call on Minister of Finance and the governor of the Bank of Ghana to give us the details and the breakdown of these disbursements.”
While presenting the 2001 Budget to Parliament last Friday, the minister said two months after taking office, the NPP government was still uncovering the exact magnitude of various holes and gaps in the financial position which it has inherited and cited an irresponsible spending spree in the very last quarter of the Fiscal Year 2000. The Bank of Ghana suddenly found that without any prior agreement or planning, the Government had increased its overdrawn position from 3 billion cedis at the end of September to about 900 billion cedis by the end of December.
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‘It is mischievous’ - Peprah
The former Minister for Finance in the NDC government, Mr Kwame Peprah, has described the 2001 national budget presented last Friday to Parliament as ‘Mischievous’, reports The Daily Guide.
“It is a mischievous way of presenting information,” he told the media in Parliament soon after the budget was read.
An obviously ruffled Peprah said that the impression is being created that they spent all the money in the nation’s coffers.
“How could we have spent such an enormous amount of money within 3 months,” he asked.
He said they could not have spent money foolishly because “there was no realisation or prediction by us that Prof. Mills was going to lose where did the money go, what was it used for; It was as if we had gone to use the money for political campaign, he said.
In a reaction, Finance Minister, Mr Osafo-Maafo explained that it is possible Peprah was not aware of the hole that was being created under his very nose. He stated, “I received a letter from the governor of the Central Bank telling me that the debit balance of the government account was 3 billion cedis at a date in September and it increased to 885 billion cedis at a date in December. And the governor asked me specifically to investigate. And as we are talking now, a firm of accountants are investigating.”
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2001 budget – Osafo-Maafo bites
The Public Agenda says words are cheap and actions dear so judgement on the Kufuor government’s seriousness in pursuing better economic policies would still have to wait despite last week’s presentation of the government’s first budget last Friday by Finance Minister, Yaw Osafo-Maafo.
Christened as an interim budget it is different from the ex-government’s budgets in many ways though not in all.
The budget statement presented to Parliament offers some tough solution to Ghana’s economic crisis, putting across a lot of stress on strategies to control government expenditure, cut income and corporate taxes and probe government agencies.
Under the budget, government will pay for expenses only if it has enough revenue to cover the expenses. In otherwise, zero deficit financing.
As a strategy, the government will set up an Economic Policy Co-ordination Committee by March 31st to ensure that funds are used wisely to inject discipline in government business whiles funds collected by government agencies which were not going to the Consolidated Fund, should be deposited in the fund.
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Move for HIPC bad
The General Secretary of the Teachers and Education Workers Union (TEWU), Mr Dan Ayim Antwi, on Friday described the government’s decision to join the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative as very disturbing and disappointing.
He said the Trades Union Congress (TUC) would not relent in its fight against the country joining the initiative, ‘The Ghanaian Times’ states.
Speaking at the closing of a three-day seminar at Takoradi ‘Gender Issues’ for 23 executives of the women’s wing of the TEWU, Mr Antwi stated that ‘Ghana is not so poor as to join the HIPC initiative”.
The seminar was organised by TEWU and jointly sponsored by Brussels-based Education and the Federation of Netherlands Trades Union.
The General Secretary said that by opting to join HIPC, the government and had betrayed the trust Ghanaians had in its saying that, “some countries are poorer than Ghana but have not joined the club”.
He said that the nation’s progress depended on its workforce and not on HIPC since no elaborate education had been undertaken to explain the merits and demerits associated with the club.
In a related story captioned ‘It’s not a tag of poverty’, Mr Dan Botwe, General Secretary of the New Patriotic Party, says the HIPC status is an economic theory that does not tag any Ghanaian with poverty.
“Ghana is wealthy, but due to economic mismanagement by the previous government, it is now poor and indebted,” Mr Botwe told the Ghana News Agency in an interview on Saturday in reaction to criticisms over the government’s decision to join the HIPC initiative.
“It is very bad that as a nation we are using all our earnings to service debts to the chagrin of other social services, but if by just declaring that we can’t service our debt we will benefit from a relief, why not?” he asked.
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Review rates
The Daily Graphic says Mr Kwamena Bartels, Minister for Works and Housing, has called for a comprehensive review of construction rates in the industry, particularly in the road sector, to enable the country to save money to embark on other development projects.
He cited the construction of a kilometre of road in Ghana costing $600,000 but the same work costing $450,000 in Nigeria and $400,000 in Togo.
Making the call in a speech at the 32nd conference of the Ghana Institute of Surveyors (GIS) in Accra on Sunday, Mr Bartels said the ministry is prepared to assist in that direction and urged all the relevant bodies in the sector to co-operate with it to make the move a success.
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One dies, 5 sustain injuries in shoot-out
One person died instantly and five others sustained gunshot wounds on Wednesday when supporters of two factions in a chieftaincy dispute at Portor in the Kintampo District clashed during an installation ceremony.
The dead has been identified as Madam Adisa Tokyi, 35, but the names of the injured persons, who are receiving intensive medical attention at the Kintampo Government Hospital, were not immediately available.
The incident is reported to have started soon after one of the factions, Chawa-Chawa Royal Family, installed one Kofi Pamfie as the Odikro of Portor.
The Brong Ahafo Regional Crime officer, Mr Ahmadou Salifu, confirmed the incident in an interview with the Ghana News Agency in Sunyani on Thursday, and indicated that there has been a long standing chieftaincy dispute between the Chawa-Chawa Family and the Bawa Mohammed family.
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Truth Commission on AFRC/NDC eras
The Dispatch reports the Attorney-General and Minister for Justice, Nana Akufo-Addo as saying that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission announced by President J.A. Kufuor is likely to be set up and be operational by June this year.
Nana Akufo-Addo told TV3, a private television station, in an interview on March 3. He revealed that the commission’s work will cover the June 4 AFRC and December 31 PNDC eras.
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2001 budget is half-baked - NDC
The National Democratic Congress (NDC) has described the 2001 budget presented to Parliament last Friday as “half-baked” and that it “lacks substance”.
Speaking at a news conference organised by the party to state its views on the budget, Hon. Moses Aduko Asaga, former Deputy Minister and Member of Parliament for Nabdam, stated that for the Finance Minister, Hon. Yaw Osafo-Maafo, to describe the budget as an interim one is ample demonstration that the New Patriotic Party (NPP) administration was not ready to present the budget.
According to him, an interim budget has never been known in the economic history of this nation and that constitutes a great disappointment to all Ghanaians. The budget, he claimed, is nothing but a rehash of on-going programmes initiated by the NDC administration.
“The budget did not address issues of the positive change upon which the NPP rode to power. About 80 per cent of the initiatives which they claim to be theirs are actually continuation of NDC policies.”
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Massive probe begins
President John Agyekum Kufuor has ordered a probe into the Presidential Jet – the Gulf Stream, the origin of which remains elusive, reports The Independent.
The Kufuor-led government has since assumption of office two months ago, refused to travel on the Presidential Jet, and party functionaries claim “it’s a decision that the government will not renege on…”
Credible government sources said a four-man team comprising Nana Akufo-Addo, Minister of Justice and Attorney-General, Hon. J.H. Mensah, Minister of Government Business, Jacob Obetsebi-Lamptey, Minister for Presidential Affairs and Kwabena Agyepong, a leading member of the NPP who is assigned the duty of assisting the Minister for Media Relations, has been set up by President Kufuor to help unravel the mysterious source of the controversial jet.
Meanwhile, the Minister of Finance, Mr Yaw Osafo-Maafo, has also announced a number of financial management audits of government agencies in the Budget Statement presented to Parliament on Friday. Some of the affected agencies are the GNPC, TOR, BOST, SIC and SSNIT.
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House cleaning Budget - After 20 years of mess
The Accra Mail describes last Friday's budget submission in Parliament by Hon Yaw Osafo-Maafo as a marathon presentation and a sterling performance comparable in quality only to what was witnessed in 1972 during the 2nd republic when the present Majority Leader in Parliament, Hon. J.H. Mensah was the Finance Minister.
When the Hon Osafo-Maafo took his place at the podium in Parliament last week to deliver the government's budget proposals, it was with a sense of history and mission.
If anyone had doubts about the seriousness of President Kufuor to lead this country into a brighter future, then those doubts must have been totally banished by both the personality of the minister and the content of his message.
"He strode into Parliament in a self-effacing manner and went at his subject like a teacher with the determination to drum understanding into his pupils' heads. Sometimes didactic, sometimes plain simple, Osafo-Maafo held his spellbound listeners with an incisive dissection of the economy and his remedies for the way forward."
Like the President in his address on March 4,5 and 6, the minister did not hide the enormity of the tasks ahead and from the very onset declared that "All Ghanaians must be prepared to make sacrifices" and the fight to improve the situation must be "principally by all Ghanaians."
His aim, he said, is to provide an "economy solid and credit worthy" to usher in a "golden age of business."
The budget was full of optimism, as it was also cautious in its projections. It set its target of GDP growth at a modest 4 per cent inflation at 25 per cent and budget deficit at 5.2 per cent of GDP.
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NPP moves to fulfill promises
The Ghanaian Voice says the first budget of the NPP to usher in the Golden-Age of Business which sought to build new visions for the country was heavy in its promises from the NPP electioneering Manifesto, with Mr Yaw Osafo-Maafo, the main speaker and presenter explicit with language, facts and figures, and delivery.
"He had soothing words for all sectors of the economy. For the farmers, he promised them better money for their efforts, mass free spraying of their cocoa farms and construction of roads to facilitate not only the movement of the cocoa but also their farm produce."
A new breed of rice will be introduced into the country while the nation's fishing grounds will be closely monitored and guarded so that no encroachers come to fish illegally in Ghana waters.
In the case of roads, Hon. Osafo-Maafo intimated that the ones started by the NDC and were not completed will be attended to and more feeder roads constructed. The Keta Sea Defence wall will be completed and the Korle Lagoon Ecological project enhanced.
The Voice says true to the NPP's promise that it will move swiftly to reduce the size of Government deficit, the government has frozen certain payments.
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