2010 Budget lacks sense of urgency

2010 Budget lacks sense of urgency
November 20, 2009
"The 2010 Budget presented a couple of days ago does not carry with it the gravitas and policy intentions that would make it easier for our local companies to gain easier access to credit, obtain lower cost funds and create more jobs in the country," Mr. Ladi Nylander, National Chairman of the CPP told journalists in Accra.

Mr. Nylander noted that Dr Duffuor was quite clear in setting the tone and direction that pointed to a business as usual policy orientation.

Mr. Nylander noted that the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the New Patriotic Party (NPP) blame game continued through repeated emphasis on comparing arrears and problems left by the NDC in 2000, and that left by the NPP administration in 2008.

Mr. Nylander noted that the persistence of the two parties in trying to score political points gives additional cause for the CPP to worry about what the future would bring to the ordinary Ghanaian.

"Unfortunately the NDC Government is yet to come to grips with this basic principle," he said.

He said there was "no single digit inflation, no reduction of budget deficit to sustainable levels, no improvement in the foreign exchange regime," he said.

He said this was accompanied by a programme that could be described as an economic stabilisation objective, which was antithesis of the social democratic ideology spelt out in the NDC's 2008 manifesto.

Mr. Nylander said since President John Evans Atta Mills took power in January "we have been on a rocky road to the Better Ghana it promised in 2008".

Touching on the production sector, Mr. Nylander said government should extend the level of encouragement for local rice production to other sectors such as tomato, particularly in the face of the millions of dollars spent on importing tomato puree while there was a huge glut of tomato in the country annually.

Mr. Nylander said nothing new was presented in the budget to provide concrete expression to specific areas such as oil and gas, modern agriculture, private sector development, key infrastructure and Information, Communication and Technology development.

He noted that the budget had no sense of direction and had little about growth, adding that given the prospects of missing the 2009 GDP growth target of 5.9 per cent with an actual of about 4.7 per cent, it was difficult to determine how the 6.5 per cent GDP growth target for 2010 would be achieved.

GNA