John Jinapor laments the government's handling of capital expenditure
Parliament will debate the budget from next week
The Member of Parliament for Yapei-Kusawgu, has wondered why the Minister of Finance, Ken Ofori-Atta, wasn’t able to tell Ghanaians the number of people the government has been able to employ in the last year.
He questioned why the minister was silent on such a major detail while reading the 2022 Budget Statement and Economic Policy in parliament earlier this week.
The MP, who was speaking on the Saturday, November 20, 2021, edition of NewsFile on the JoyNews channel and monitored by GhanaWeb, lamented how the incumbent government has increased the capital expenditure of the country in last four years.
“One of the productive sectors of the economy is capital expenditure. If you look at our capital expenditure between 2013 to 2016 as a percentage of GDP, it’s 15.45%. The NPP’s capital expenditure over the last four years is 7.3% and yet you’ve increased our debt from 120 to 341 billion. This is why we’re in this quagmire,” he said.
Asked how he responds to the government’s plan, through the Ghana Cares Obatanpa project, to provide one million jobs in three years, he said that is a mere rhetoric.
“It is mere rhetoric because the minister told us about this in November 2020. We are in November, this is one year since he told us that. He came and read the budget, he hasn’t told us the number of jobs they’ve created so far; he hasn’t told us. How many jobs have you created from the Obatanpa. It’s a 3-year program, we’ve done one year, we’re left with two years.
“So, out of those three years, this one year, how many of those jobs have we created?” he quizzed.
Parliament is expected to start debates on the budget on Tuesday, November 23, 2021.
John Jinapor is MP for Yapei-Kusawgu