The minority is concerned freeze on public-sector hiring will heighten unemployment

Therefore, the group has asked the government to consider the number of youths that risk becoming jobless as against the existing unemployment.

This follows the government’s announcement of a freeze on hiring into the public and civil service effective January 2023 as part of cabinet directives for expenditure rationalization in the 2023 Budget.

The Minority Leader, Haruna Iddrisu addressing a Post Budget Workshop at Ho in the Volta Region, said the 2023 Budget indicated the country's highly distressed state.

“Mr. Speaker, Ghana’s economy and as I listened to the Honorable Minister of Finance, the 2023 budget statement is replete with evidence that government is simply broke and the economy in crisis. An economy under life support that needs some resuscitation”, he said.

He also mentioned that some of the government's interventions, including the capping of enrollment of nursing and teacher trainees and the reduction of the size of convoys, could worsen the state of the economy.

Meanwhile, the Majority Leader, Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu says external shocks and the depreciation of the cedi have been major contributing factors to the current economic hardships that the 2023 Budget seeks to tackle.

“These (COVID-19 and Russian-Ukraine war) have created internal and external imbalances in the economic woes; high inflation and unsustainable financing of the current economic deficit and rapid depreciation of the cedi. Suddenly, these variables have brought a lot of hardships to the citizenry, particularly the poor and vulnerable”, he noted.

He added that the budget intends to alleviate Ghanaians' plight through increased social protection spending.