Minister for Information Kojo Oppong Nkrumah has urged colleague members of the Minority caucus to put partisanship aside and support government’s revenue measures.
The Information Minister in a briefing on Tuesday appealed to the Minority in parliament to help pass the outstanding revenue bills to advance Ghana’s $3 billion programme to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Executive Board for approval for the country to ease its current economic difficulties.
The bills, which are currently in Parliament, are the Income Tax (Amendment) Bill, Excise Duty and Excise Tax Stamp (Amendment) Bills as well as the Growth and Sustainability Levy Bill.
“To our colleagues in the Minority, I think it is clear that we need to work together to achieve a certain objective for the country.
“Sometimes we are whipped up but let’s look at the country’s interest at this point in time.”
“The world is ready to help us, China, the Paris Club and external creditors are all with us in a good place now and are looking at us to see if we can help ourselves. My appeal to those in government, Minority, economic groups is that, we must ensure that these revenue bills are passed to close this GH¢4 billion gap”, he added.
Already, the Bank of Ghana has indicated that these fiscal reforms will provide significant reduction of debt service and help create fiscal space.
The international and domestic bond markets are shut for the financing of government’s programmes, forcing government to rely on the Treasury Bills and concessional loans as the primary sources of financing for the 2023 fiscal year.
This is also crucial because, as part of the prior actions in the IMF Staff Level Agreement, the BoG and the Ministry of Finance have finalised a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on zero financing to the budget, which will be signed soon.
Mr. Oppong Nkrumah emphasised that with the commitments made by external creditors, it behoves parliament to show good faith by passing the revenue bills in the supreme interest of the country.
He pointed out that failure to pass the bills will amount to holding all the efforts made to save the economy hostage which can derail the progress made so far.
The Information Minister is hopeful that the passage of the bills in addition to all the agreed prior actions in the staff level agreement to secure the bailout will be critical in resetting the economy on the path of recovery, including putting it firmly on a disinflation path and sustained growth