Terkper Presents 2014 Budget Tuesday

Finance Minister Seth Tekper will on Tuesday present the 2014 Budget to Parliament for approval. The proposed budget, which was fine-tuned by Cabinet last week, is expected to cover job creation, skills development and efficiency in the country�s economy. Information & Media Relations Minister, Mahama Ayariga, who disclosed this during a media briefing at the Flagstaff House in Accra, said next year�s budget would include the transition of the Ghanaian economy from lower middle-income to the middle-income level. He blamed the over running of last year�s budget on the payment of salaries and wages, giving assurance that it would be adequately catered for in the new budget. However, it is not known where Government will find money to cater for the wage bill since issues bothering on job creation and skills development had been added to it. Government set a deficit of nine percent, this year but this target is unlikely to be achieved because it is expected to be higher the target. Government failed to achieve a first quarter budget deficit target of 3 percent of GDP (GH�2.7 billion), reaching 3.8 percent of GDP (GH�3.4 billion) instead. Again, the country�s debt stock more than quadrupled from GH�9.5 billion at the end of 2008 to GH�38.3 billion (43.2 percent of GDP) as at April 2013. Instead of a recommended 35 percent expenditure of its revenue on the Single Spine Salary Structure (SSSS), government spent about 70 percent. As a result, Fitch, the international credit rating agency, downgraded Ghana from a B+ to B. The situation whereby budgets are read before negotiating salaries and wages does not augur well for Government, according to Mr Ayariga. He added that Government would go for international loans, which attract lower interest rates, compared to domestic borrowing which attracts higher interest rates.