Flagbearer of the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP), Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, has said he will realign government expenditure to focus on the private sector to drive growth if he is elected president.
According to the Vice President and Head of the Economic Management Team (EMT), excessive government borrowing to fund projects leaves a lot of pressure on the fiscals and has implications for the microeconomic indicators.
Dr Bawumia made remarks during a meeting with the leadership of the Labour Union Forum in Accra on Wednesday.
He emphasised that global implications for the economy, if not resolved at the macro level, will have micro implications.
“So, when I talk about the government, how it’d reduce the cost of living and create space as far as the fiscal is concerned is very key.
“One of the things that we have done over the years is that the size of government has grown. Some people say it has grown too large but it has grown and the government seems to want to do so much in the economic space build all the roads, build all the hospitals and everything, in so doing there is a burden that comes on government and government is therefore in the process looking to either increase taxes or increase borrowing to do that.
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“One of the key things I want to bring about is essentially to realign the government expenditure and bring a part of it towards the private sector.”
According to Dr Bawumia, the country can provide a lot of services without necessarily focusing on increasing government expenditure.
“The more government expenditure we increase, ultimately we have to tax more or borrow more and when we have to do that, we create less space to increase the condition of service of workers.
“If you have to spend a lot of resources on paying interest on loans and so on, you end up with less that is available for the people who are doing the work,” he said.
Dr. Bawumia further emphasised that the private sector has been at the forefront of the government’s digitalization drive, citing the Ghana Card, Ghana.gov, digitalisation of the port, and passport office as being led by the private sector.
Meanwhile, businesses continue to grapple with a harsh economic climate coupled with numerous taxes and the rapid depreciation of the cedi.
Ghana Federation of Traders gives gov’t 2 weeks to bring dollar to GHC10 or face demonstration
Currently, the cedi is selling for between GHC15.20 and GHC15.65 to a dollar.
Owing to this, the Ghana Federation of Traders has given the government a two-week ultimatum to bring the dollar to GHC10.
The federation said its members have lost almost 20 percent of their capital to the cedi’s continued depreciation.
