Ghanaian president pledges strict fiscal discipline despite elections

The government of Ghana will not bow to pressure of spending during elections but will sustain fiscal discipline, President John Dramani Mahama pledged here on Wednesday.

In spite of the stiff challenge he faces from Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, Presidential candidate of main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) in the November 7 polls, Mahama pledged in his State of the Nation Address he intended to lead the country to break the cycle of election year fiscal overruns.

"The bane of our economic management has been the cyclical huge election year budget deficit. It is an unfavorable narrative for which Ghana unfortunately has become famous.

"I have assured the nation and our partners that my administration will exercise strict fiscal discipline even in this year, Mr. Speaker, in order that we can also transform this negative narrative of our country," Mahama pledged.

This year, Ghana is expected to achieve a budget deficit as low as 5.3 percent of GDP under the IMF Extended Credit Facility (ECF) which provides a tighter fiscal space than originally anticipated.

Within that context, the president said the government must practice a greater degree of fiscal prudence in 2016.

Admitting that austerity path had brought much hardship to the people, Mahama expressed gratitude to Ghanaians for their forbearance.

"The sacrifices that we have made placed our economy back on the path of growth. Mr. Speaker, it makes our economy more resilient even in a volatile global financial environment. Working together we have chalked major achievements in our economic management journey so far," Mahama said.

According to him, the country has been able to contain the unsustainable utility and fuel subsidy overruns by implementing the automatic price adjustment of petroleum and utility prices that took effect in July and December 2015 respectively.

The implication of this, according to him, has been a minimal budgeted amount of about 50 million Ghana Cedis or 12.82 million U.S. dollars for the 2015 budget and provisional outturn relatively lower than provided for.

In her comments, Ella Antwi-Ticehurst, Managing Director of Aspects Properties Services, lauded government for working hard to end the energy crisis since that would inure to a more favorable business environment.

"On the issue of power barges, I am impressed about how well government has worked in getting the additional Mega Watts of power barges into Ghana to solve the power crisis so that was highly impressive," the business executive said.

She hoped that the new energy input would generate jobs and sustain growth in the economy.

"Jobs are going to stay on because a lot of companies were folding up as a result. I wanted to hear more of what government was doing in curbing the large public debt which is at 70 percent to revenue so I wanted to hear what measures are being put in place to curb that huge public debt." Endit