CEBRE - GHANA URGES ECONOMIC MANAGEMENT TEAM TO MAINTAIN FISCAL DISCIPLINE
Cebre
The Center for Economic and Business Research (CEBRE),a non partisan and non governmental think tank, has urged the Economic Management Team (EMT) to maintain fiscal discipline in and out of International Monitory Fund (IMF) program.
According to the Center, the three billion dollars (USD 3B) much awaited IMF program, which would be disbursed in three or four trenches, is not going to solve the country's numerous economic challenges.
It further indicated that the injection of the USD 3 billion would only help restore stability in our micro economic indicators including lending rate, inflation, interest rate, and exchange rate.
The Executive Director of CEBRE, Gordon Newlove Asamoah, in an interview with Asempa Dawuro newspaper on Friday about bouncing the Ghanaian economy back, said cutting of significant government expenditure was very prudent.
Mr Asamoah noted that the size of the government too must be reduced drastically to avoid unnecessary expenses and borrowing saying "we should we have to borrow 60 billion cedis to finance our budget deficit last year".
He added that if the government keeps borrowing both locally and abroad, the performance of the economy would still worsen even after the IMF money comes.
The Executive Director implored the government to empower all the mandated state agencies to recoup lost state funds, as recorded by the Auditor General's Report (AGR) that over 20 billion cedis got missing in 2022 alone.
" with this huge amount in the country's coffers, what is 3 billion for? We would not have been to the IMF at all" he added.
Mr Asamoah stressed that whenever the country was in IMF program, all our expenses were carefully controlled and managed just to meet their conditions saying "why can't we maintain the same discipline when we are not with them".
He emphasised the need for government to do effective economic policies evaluation to see areas to do import substitution interventions, in order to get more foreign exchange earnings to boost our balance of payment system.
The Executive Director further admonished the government to review the Free Senior High School (FSHS) educational policy, to allow parents who can pay to do so, and others who may need just scholarship support.
Mr Asamoah indicated that it was the mission of CEBRE to facilitate inclusive development and sharpening institutional policies through research, advisory service and training.
" CEBRE supports Rural Entrepreneurship and Local Economic Development (LED) and policy advocacy for organisations to promote inclusive development, through objectivity, integrity and confidentiality" he assured.
By Emmanuel Adu Gyamfi
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