The Minority in Parliament has accused the government of churning out wrong data to tarnish the image of the past government in the recently delivered budget statement by the Minister of Finance, Dr Cassiel Ato Forson.
Addressing a news conference at Parliament House in Accra yesterday, the immediate past Finance Minister, Dr Mohammed Amin Adam, said the government “has erroneously churned out wrong data in a bid to tarnish the image of the NPP administration by including GHs49.2 billion in expenditure claims without any basis”.
He indicated that the government through the budget statement had churned out fiscal deficit on commitment basis of 7.6 per cent of GDP and a primary deficit of 3.6 per cent of GDP to imply that the NPP administration mismanaged the fiscals in accordance with the intentions of the government.
Dr Adam, who is also the New Patriotic Party (NPP) member of Parliament for Karaga in the Northern Region, stressed that an economy with such strong revenue performance and expenditure management, as stated in the budget, could not produce the kind of elevated fiscal outturns the minister announced, adding that the budget brought the fiscal data into credibility crisis.
Breach of IMF Programme
The former Minister of Finance described as untrue the assertion of Dr Forson that the country had “breached the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Programme when the evidence is to the contrary and when the IMF itself is yet to conduct a review of programme implementation in April” this year.
He said while the Minister of Finance announced a breach of the IMF programme before a review by the IMF, the budget projected to foreign financing for this budget for the year to include $720 million from IMF and $600 million from World Bank.
Dr Adam questioned, “how come the government doesn’t know that when Ghana fails a review because of his manipulated numbers, they will not receive the $1.3 billion from the IMF and the World Bank?”
“Do they know that all the reliefs we got from our debt restructuring — almost $4 billion of outright debt cancellation and another $7.5 billion in debt service relief — will all revert to the status quo before the debt restructuring exercise?” the Ranking Member on the Finance Committee in Parliament asked.
Clarity on betting tax
The former minister of finance who came under fire for stating that the previous government had neither collected nor implemented the betting tax, attributed his comment to lack of clarity on the part of Dr Forson, who according to him, misconstrued the betting tax to be lottery tax in his budget statement.
“The NDC in its manifesto promised to scrap 10 per cent levy on bet winnings which can be called betting tax.
It is different from winnings from other forms of lotteries like lotto and other games of chance.
“So, if I see in the budget statement by the Minister that he will abolish winnings from lotteries and call it betting tax, I know for a fact that it wasn’t implemented.
“I listened to myself again and if the impression it created was that, the betting tax wasn’t implemented then that was inaccurate on my part.
“What I really wanted to say was that, what he called betting tax as in taxes on lotto winnings was not implemented,” the NPP MP for Karaga clarified.
Dr Adam raised suspicion as to whether the Minister of Finance really wanted to abolish the betting tax because the NDC’s manifesto promised to abolish bet winnings which was the betting tax.
He asserted that he expected the Minister of Finance to be very specific that he would abolish betting tax or bet winnings, and not confuse betting tax as in bet winnings with taxes on other forms of lottery.
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SOURCE: GRAPHICONLINE
