Minority Leader Dr. Cassiel Ato Forson has criticised government for missing a critical opportunity to abolish certain taxes that many Ghanaians had anticipated would be removed.

Addressing Parliament following the mid-year budget statement by Finance Minister Dr. Mohammed Amin Adam on Tuesday, 23 July 2024, Dr. Forson underscored the public's disappointment with the continuation of taxes such as the E-levy, Emission Levy, and Covid Levy.

Dr. Forson accused the Akufo-Addo administration of lacking the necessary ideas to effectively manage the economy.

“Ghanaians expected that the government would have removed a number of taxes because businesses are packing out of the country.” he stated.

According to Dr. Forson, “the taxes include the Covid levy, e-levy, ‘borla’ tax, tax on domestic electricity, emission levy. This is a missed opportunity. They are bereft of ideas, you are on your way to opposition.”

During his presentation, Finance Minister Dr. Mohammed Amin Adam revealed that Ghana's provisional total debt stock stood at GHS742 billion, equivalent to USD50.9 billion as of June 2024.

This represents 70.6 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

He elaborated: “The stock consists of external debt of GHS452.0 billion and domestic debt of GHS290.0 billion, representing 60.9 per cent and 39.1 per cent of the total debt stock, respectively. As a percentage of GDP, external and domestic debt represented 43.0 percent and 27.6 per cent, respectively.

This indicates an increase of 22 per cent due to the effect of the cedi depreciation and continuous disbursements from creditors.”

Despite these figures, Dr. Adam assured Ghanaians that the government is living within its budget.

He emphasised that expenditures have been controlled to stay within the 2024 Budget Appropriation and noted that the government had exceeded its midyear revenue target by 0.2 per cent as of end-June 2024.

“In effect, Mr. Speaker, we are living within our means. Indeed, consistent with our programme with the IMF, we are on course to achieving a primary surplus of 0.5 percent of GDP by end of the year,” he said.

The Finance Minister also highlighted the successful completion of the second review of the Extended Credit Facility with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which led to the disbursement of the third tranche of 360 million US Dollars, bringing total disbursement to about USD1.6 billion.

He detailed the government's achievements in debt restructuring. “We have completed the Debt Restructuring programme with the Official Creditor Committee (OCC), covering USD5.1 billion dollars resulting in approximately USD2.8 billion of debt relief.

This means that we will not service our debt to our official creditors from 2023 to 2026,” he explained.