Ghana can save GH¢83b in fiscal readjustments

fund to drive eFffciency and productivity. Another recommendation was maintaining the 2022 capital expenditure level by reducing the Annual Budget Funding Amount of Ministries Departments and Agencies and foreign nance Capex provisions by 50 per cent, which will save Ghana about GH¢10.7 billion. Professor Godfred A. Bokpin, an Economist at the University of Ghana Business School (UGBS), said the overemphasis on debt restructuring to the detriment of creditors was not the way out. He said the road to debt sustainability involved scal and structural adjustments and not solely dependent on debt restructuring.

“We agree that a certain level of debt restructuring is unavoidable but Ghana’s problem is largely governance. The governance problems manifest explicitly in economic mismanagement.” Prof. Bokpin said. He said the country needed governance reforms in terms of product, market and broad structural reforms, which should be placed higher above scal adjustment and debt restructuring. With scal adjustment, Prof Bokpin said there was signicant room for expenditure-based scal consolidation that would not hurt growth. Dr Patrick Asuming, an Econ- omist and Senior Lecture, UGBS, said, it was imperative that the government did the scal adjustment, otherwise “we will revisit debt restructuring some time to come.”

“The scal is what generates the de cit and accumulates to the debt. If we do the debt operation and the scal side is not solved, we would virtually go back for another debt operation,” he added.

Dr Asuming said the debt restructuring was about lives that would be a ected permanently; therefore, it was important that the citizenry came together and ensured that the right things were done for posterity’s sake.

Source: GNA