The Minority in Parliament are calling for Finance Minister, Ken Ofori Atta to be ousted out of office for breaching the Fiscal Responsibility Act that he established.
According to them, Ofori Atta failed to notify the house a month ahead about his intentions to go beyond the fiscal deficit and needed their support to suspend the act.
Ken Ofori Atta had been in Parliament to ask for suspension of the Fiscal Responsibility Act which prohibits government from spending more than 5% of Gross Domestic Product every year.
Per the Fiscal Responsibility Act, government can only spend more than 5% of GDP if it calls for a review a month earlie.
Speaking in Parliament, Minority leader Haruna Iddrisu said “Mr Speaker, respectfully, let me refer you to paragraph 438; unthinkable and unimaginable, instead of doing what is needful under the public financial management act, the minister is coming for what he calls and I quote “Mr Speaker, from the development that far, it is clear that the fiscal rules of a deficit not exceeding 5% of GDP and a positive primary balance enshrined in the Fiscal Responsibility Act 2018, Act 982 are neither feasible nor unthinkable.”
“Within the regime of fiscal deficit he [Ofori-Atta] himself said in the law that if he exceeds the fiscal deficit of 5% then he will go home and that he should be sanctioned.”
He added, “So to evade the sanctions he has come for Parliament to suspend the law. We will not suspend the law, he will undergo the sanction; he define it for himself.”
Mr Iddrisu who is also the Member of Parliament of Tamale South stated, “under the Fiscal Responsibility Act, he provided law. Mr Speaker, if he himself under the Fiscal Responsibility Act, and we kept arguing that the base in terms of the fiscal management and fiscal legislation was what the NDC under President Mahama became a public financial management.”
“In any case, Parliament, do you suspend your laws? You came and lay papers for suspension of fiscal law, if you’re coming for a review of the law, come for it, you want an amendment of the law, come for it because the law was definite”, he mentioned.
He concluded, “Mr Speaker, when the choir master says he has breached his own 5% rule, he is a potential candidate for sanction under the Fiscal Responsibility Act. We will accordingly sanction him in accordance with the law.”
Source: GhanaFeed.com
