Finance Minister Not Massaging Economic Figures – Government

Government has denied allegations by the Minority in Parliament that the Finance Minister, Ken Ofori Atta is manipulating economic figures to make the Akufo Addo administration look good.

According to the NDC MPs, the economy is not performing well as the government will want Ghanaians to believe, expressing worry over the country’s rising debt stock.

Speaking to Starr News, Minority Spokesperson on Finance, Cassiel Ato Forson said the vote of censure against the Finance Minister as stipulated in the Fiscal Responsibility Act is in the offing.

“I believe the time has come for all of us to encourage our Finance Minister to do what is right. This game of just massaging public numbers and doing things contrary to the international standard can never be accepted. This is weakening the fiscal governance of the country and we cannot encourage him to do such a thing no wonder the so-called fiscal consolidation is not actually reflecting. Under the Fiscal Responsibility Act, a vote of no confidence will be voted against the Minister of Finance if he exceeds a fiscal deficit of 5%. And so in order for him to run away from a vote of no confidence is to misreport and massage the numbers so that he looks good. I can assure you that, that vote of no confidence will happen.”

But the Government Spokesperson on Finance Daniel Okyem Aboagye says the Minority has gotten their facts wrong.

“I don’t think what the Minority is talking about is true, there’s no incentive for the Finance Minister to massage figures. Compared to the NDC we managed to get the economy out of the crisis that we inherited. Ghanaians know that the NDC will let things appear to look at what they are not. The Microeconomic figures are all pointing in the right direction, we are out of IMF programme, we’re consolidating some of the gains we’ve had since we took over. We picked the economy from 3.4% to about 7%, so in the midst of all the gains we’ve made if you were in the opposition what would you have done,” he asked?

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