The opposition, National Democratic Congress (NDC) has described the New Patriotic Party (NPP) government’s statement of decreasing financial hardship as not indicative of the reality on the ground to the Ghanaian citizen.
They noted that, the government has rather taken more from Ghanaians considering the many taxes imposed on citizens.
Speaking in an interview, the minority spokesperson on finance, Casiel Ato Forson, said it is “laughable for the [government] to come out with the argument that they have given 12.2 billion to Ghanaians when they have also imposed taxes on Ghanaians”
He argued that “inasmuch as government is talking about how much it has given to people, they should as well quantify the amount they are taking from the people”
This followed the Finance minister, Ken Ofori Atta’s assertion during the 2020 budget reading that, the government has directly or indirectly put GhC 1.2 billion into the pockets of Ghanaians since 2017 through its social intervention initiatives.
Forson noted that the government boasts of reducing financial burden by reducing electricity bills by Ghc 1.8 billion, but in the same period, prices of fuel kept escalating.
The minority leader, Haruna Iddrisu, described the budget as uninspiring and that, Ghanaians are worse off than the erstwhile Mahama-led government considering the hardships the country is facing.
Source: Jonas Danquah