The Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta, has stated that the Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo administration would not seek more funding from Parliament.
According to him, this was needed given the year’s success in non-oil tax income collection.
On July 31, the Finance Minister made these statements when presenting the mid-year budget review to Parliament.
“In the first half of the year, we continued to make progress toward exceeding our non-oil revenue targets for the year.” Despite some apparent gaps in VAT, we have observed advances in non-oil tax revenue collection.
“However, oil revenues have fallen short of expectations due to changes in global prices. We will, therefore, undertake a downward review of the oil-related revenue as well as the corresponding expenditures to align with the underperformance of some of our revenue handles. Specifically, this will impact the Annual Budget Funding Amount (ABFA),” the Finance Minister said.
Mr Ofori-Atta further linked the decision not to seek more funds to the completion of components of the Domestic Debt Exchange Programme.
He also stated that the Appropriation has been reduced from GH227.7 billion to GH206.0 billion due to the reduction in foreign-financed CAPEX.
“Mr Speaker, in view of the reason outlined above, as well as the lower domestic interest payment and amortization, following the completion of a part of the DDEP, and the reduction in the foreign-financed CAPEX, the Appropriation has been revised from GHS227.7 billion as presented and approved in November 2022 to GHS206.0 billion.
“This is in line with Regulation 24 sub-regulation (3) of the Public Financial Management Act Regulations 2019 (L.I. 2378). Mr Speaker, we will, therefore, not require a Supplementary Budget,” he stated.
