The 2023 budget declaration is “without actual substance,” according to Senyo Hosi, the former CEO of the Chamber of Bulk Oil Distributors (CBOD), and is best characterized as empty talk.
Speaking on Joy News’ “PM Express” program on November 28, he claimed that despite the finance minister’s impressive reading of the entire budget speech, he had fallen short of offering any significant remedies for Ghana’s failing economy.
He believed that the Ghanaian government had a chance to propose a policy to transform any sector of the economy, but particularly the agriculture sector, which is the main source of employment in the nation.
Senyo Hosi argued that the difficulties facing the Ghanaian economy were never addressed, and since the 2023 budget didn’t prioritize finding answers, it follows that firms will face much greater difficulties.
“I believe that the Finance Minister spoke informally but that the substance actually undermines our confidence. If you examine our current issue, it is mostly a fiscal one, thus we anticipate seeing much more fiscal consolidation.
What are we witnessing, though? We are considering a strategy to widen our budget deficit. That doesn’t send us a good message because it means that, as businesses, we’ll be even more shut out of the funding market because we must invest in all these projects, he explained.
Hosi pointed out that although the government expressed a desire to change the rice production business in the budget, their proposed changes are at odds with the actual situation.
Very lovely thing mentioned, however it doesn’t appear to be sustainable when you look at the budgetary provision for it. And speaking of rice—which has been mentioned frequently—I don’t see any policy proposals that actually aim to transform a single agricultural sector. I can see the intention: “I want to flip the rice, chicken, and maize,” but that is incorrect grammar.
“Exactly what policy recommendations do you propose to implement? You can’t tell me that developing rice would require a hundred thousand or so hectares of land. If you genuinely want to stop importing things, we’ll need to develop more than 450,000 hectares.
What exactly are we doing at this moment? Less than half of that, so it’s clear from this budget that the structured policy proposal to even transform one sector is not really realized. This depresses me. Senyo Hosi emphasized that it appeared to be a lot of rhetoric without any concrete evidence to back it up.