It is the wish of every government to honour all its promises to the citizenry in its prepared budget, but a leading member of the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP), Kwabena Sarpong, believes the approach of the various governments from 1992 to date to implement the four year-term mandate within the annual budget is wrong.
The 2014 budget, which was presented to Parliament on Tuesday, is expected to transform the current economy into a fully-fledged middle income one.
But according to the outspoken NPP activist, 90 percent of the policies rolled out in budgets are left unaccomplished due to the fact that successive governments have been setting themselves targets achievable within the year of the budget presentation; adding that this has been the same standard from one government to another.
“….our style of formulating a budget from the era of Rawlings, Kufour, Mills and Mahama is not good and that is why 90 percent of policy initiatives contained in budgets remain unexecuted,” he asserted.
Expanding his argument on Hot Fm, he pointed out that a careful look at the 2013 budget will reveal that nothing of substantial value has been done since the government stated that 75% of the revenue collected is used to pay salaries; leaving out only 25% for development.
Suggesting ways of drafting achievable budgets for the country, he posited that it is time for government to state in a budget one specific project which can be achieved within the year; thus maintaining the existing ones with supporting materials needed to keep the administration of the old program running.
“…For me, I think it is time for us to come down to earth and tell Ghanaians that this year, we will be able to tackle one road project in the whole country while we maintain the existing ones; but as for new projects, we will only implement one. Maybe for new schools, we will build only one and maintain the old ones. We will provide what it takes to run the administration”, he suggested.
He therefore concluded that, with this style of budget, every government can tackle the developmental project on yearly basis without rolling out so many initiatives in one budget, which in the end, are not achieveable.
Source: Daniel Adu Darko/Peacefmonline.com/Ghana
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