A National Budget is more than a ledger. It is the biggest marketing vehicle a government produces every year. A promise of what you are going to do with taxpayers’ money, a price of how you intend to spend it and a prospectus of how it is going to make citizens better off.
As one would expect a Ghanaian to reply over the weekend when asked how the budget went, he would probably say 389.2 billion Ghana Cedis were spent and $10 billion of a New Economy promised. No new taxes.
As marketing is understood, a product is judged by its packaging. So three harder questions must be asked of the national budget. What is being promised to the Ghanaian citizen? What does the Ghanaian have to give up to realize the budget promises? Will the promises made be kept?
Dr Cassiel Ato Forson launched a brand on 12 November. The budget of the Minister of Finance for 2027 is to be marketed under the banner of The New Economy, New Ghana, Jobs and Prosperity – seventies independence symbolism and all to get stability back into the political consciousness of Ghanaians and create confidence again.
Eight pillars of a four-year program to be financed with US$10 billion of which US$3 billion will go to commercial agriculture, US$2.2 billion to energy, US$1.5 billion to critical minerals, GH¢30 billion or 1.5% of GDP in 2027 to tourism and creative arts, textiles and garments, pharmaceuticals and biomanufacturing and last of all GH¢300m or about US$300m to technology.
Credit where credit is due, the brand architecture to the above budget theme is perhaps the most coherent the administration has offered to date. Dr. Ato Forson outlined how all the 8 programs would form part of one big production system — “finance reaching the farmer, the farm feeding the factory, the factory running on affordable power and the mineral gaining value before it is exported”.
However, all these programs form part of the main brand called National Brand — and that is what needs to be marketed and developed — not these sub-brands. And, over 2 years or so, we have been marketed to by the 24-Hour Economy brand, the Big Push brand (GH¢29.8bn in 2027), the Agenda 111 brand and now the New Economy brand.
Each of these brands had great promise but were not delivered on in time to earn the trust of Ghanaians to be upgraded to be part of the National Brand — which is what they promise.
Their experience of each of these brands would have given them the impression that each of these brands needed to be “rescued” and so, accordingly, a huge discount would be applied to the promise of the New Economy brand.
What are we buying with our patience now to get some dividend later? For GH¢389.2 billion, interest would cost about GH¢61 billion, compensation GH¢92.6 billion and legacy arrears of GH¢13.9 billion. In the end, half of the budgeted amount would be spent to settle previous debts and pay interest on previous loans before we can begin to train a single rice farmer. While it is true that for the first time in our history, capital expenditure (GH¢100.4 billion) would even exceed both the wage bill (GH¢87.4 billion) and interest (GH¢75.3 billion) of Government, a promise of no increase in taxes for now is not value addition.
A promise of no increase in taxes for now is even a reduction in the cost of being a citizen. But reducing the cost of being a citizen is not value addition.
That the government is holding taxes constant and thus lowering the cost of citizenship in terms of the taxes a Ghanaian has to pay is a price cut on an unchanged product. It may win the temporary goodwill of citizens, but the promise of such services has to be fulfilled in order to create loyalty with citizens rather than mere goodwill that would fade as quickly as it was won should the expected goods and services not reach citizens in due course.
While the budget identifies particular customer groups such as rice farmers who would be supported in new hubs in the Western and Northern regions of Ghana, poultry producers who would be supported with some GH¢245m, cocoa processors who would have 100% local processing of their products by 2030, small-scale gold miners whose raw exports would cease by end of December 2028, garment firms and pharmaceutical manufacturers who would replace part of the US$500m of annual imports of medicines into Ghana, it does not outline what specific service would be delivered to each of these customer groups.
In particular, in the face of very high interest rates of around 16% averaging across banks, the major binding constraint for all these producers would be credit at single digit interest rates and the single instrument of credit guarantee mentioned in the document is not enough.
Demandside de-risking is where the budget does well. Public funds to buy Ghanaian rice, school uniforms, hospital textiles & medicines where quality permits. Import licenses for commercial rice to be tied to local purchases & for imports to cease by 2030.
This is the reverse of building dark factories & then hoping for customers to materialize. Government is acting as anchor customer for its own producers & thus this is textbook marketing for a new brand entering a competitive market of cheaper imports. Also note that these are all falsifiable commitments & thus verifiable.
Bans are a form of push marketing and have the potential to create problems such as shortages, smuggling and even a price hike for consumers. As investors review potential destinations to deploy processing capital to, they will consider a ban as part of the country’s risk profile.
As such, Ghana needs to create a differentiator and that differentiator needs to be rooted in reliability. Evidence of a commitment to help production increase needs to be provided.
While Commercial Agriculture is promised US$3 billion, the allocation to the Ministry of Food and Agriculture for 2027 is only GH¢2.9 billion. Even so, the pillar is to run for four years mostly with private capital while public money is to be used to purchase machinery, seeds, silos and for irrigation for farmers.
Importantly, the full list of projects, the amount of private capital that will be mobilised per cedi of public funds to be expended and total jobs to be created are all not specified in the budget.
This is a prospectus that omits the use of proceeds and expected return. Indeed, it is even more egregious that the $10 billion is to be financed by lowering the primary surplus target by a percentage point of GDP of the amount of fiscal space that has been created and not found. This is defensible enough as economics but terrible as marketing to not have mentioned this in the document.
Of course, there are many weaknesses in service delivery which need to be addressed. As the budget attempts to unlock credit to agriculture by enabling individual rice farmers to establish their own rice schemes and be supported in new hubs in Western and Northern Ghana for example, it is also important to recognize that the state owes an amount greater than GH¢4.3 billion to independent power producers.
In addition, there is an outstanding GH¢13 billion for energy-related fails. If government cannot pay suppliers on time, it ruins its brand at the various points of contact with citizens and businesses alike.
This is so even as Minister Forson attempts to create a buzz around an early redemption of GH¢29 billion in restructured bonds with the catchy brand line: “Your cash is ready. Come for your money!”
What to measure? Not the (promised) outputs for 4 years but the (lived) outcomes after 12 months. The cost per job created. The market share of public contracts awarded to Ghanaian companies.
The amount of private capital (mobilized per cedi of) public investment. The percentage of cocoa, gold, manganese, bauxite etc. that is processed and added value created in Ghana. The food-basket price to be compared to the newly introduced minimum wage of GH¢25.04 per day. A quarterly citizen experience survey with specific service standards and corresponding service delivery timeframes and a way to log and solve complaints.
Even with all these events and strategies that the budget presents, it will still amount to nothing more than a heap of promises, a heap of unsatisfactory promises, if there is no delivery framework to realize these promises and an evaluation framework to hold the minister accountable for the promises made and not kept. So a last-mile delivery framework is critical.
So I will pose one question to the administration to monitor in 2027. Ghana is not suffering from lack of communication of its budget but a last-mile problem. If a budget is a promise what is the receipt that one holds?
And what is the refund policy if the goods promised never reach? Which one figure (and NOT a slogan) will Government hold itself accountable with by end of December 2027?
By Winston Asiedu Inkumsah (PhD) Marketing Scholar and Public Policy Commentator
