True to word, Finance Minister, Seth Terkper went to parliament on Wednesday morning to deliver the 2016 Budget and Financial Statement for the 2016 and 2017 years.
Below are five highlights from the address:
1. Total Revenue targets for 2016 is GHC38 billion.
This includes total oil revenue, taxes, and grants.
While, non-oil total revenue forcast is 36 billion Ghana Cedis. This will be an 18.2 percent increase over 2015's total revenues.
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2.Total debt has been put at 92.2 billion Ghana Cedis (29 billion dollars).
It is a 23 billion Ghana Cedis increase from December 2014's 79.6 billion dollars ( 24 billon dollars),
3. Total expenditures for 2016 is projected at 47 billion Ghana Cedis.
This represents an18 percent of Gross Domestic Product, and a 13 percent increase on 2015's total expenditures.
4. Government will look to domestic and international markes to plug gap in total revenue and expenditure gaps.
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A careful look at the two figures shows a financing gap or deficit of 9 billion Ghana Cedis. This is the money government will be looking to the domestic and international capital markets for.
5. Government will relaunch the National Identification Project.
This has been necessitated by challenges affecting citizen identification as exposed by the impasse over the authenticity of the electronic
