News:
November 19, 2025
Former Minister of State at the Finance Ministry Abena Osei-Asare schooled the chairman of the Finance Committee Isaac Agongo when she took her turn to debate the 2026 budget of the John Dramani Administration.
She debunked the erroneous impression that the erstwhile Akufo-Addo administration left the economy in a mess, stating that if they (NPP) had left an economy which was in a mess, they could not have left one trillion cedis of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as against two hundred and nineteen billion cedis the then National Democratic Congress (NDC) left as at 2016 when they were leaving government.
She also accused the Chairman of the Finance Committee for misleading Ghanaians when he said the NPP government borrow up to sixty billion Ghana cedis, saying,
“unless their 2025 budget is wrong because at paragraph 143, it says forty-nine point four billion cedis and not sixty billion; unless this year’s budget was wrong”, she affirmed.
“An economy in a mess and we left four months of import cover, close to nine billion dollars and an IMF programme that was not derailed? That is not correct, and not true. We were here when the finance minister said when he came, he inherited an arrears to the tune of sixty-eight point seven billion cedis.
The former minister of state at the finance ministry further added that, just last week, the finance minister came to correct himself and I was expecting that he would go back to the numbers and correct it because according to him, they have validated the arrears of 68 billion and it is only forty-seven point four billion that is a recognized areas.
“So, if that is the case, how do you then consistently use 6.8 billion cedis to prove a point? They will have to check their data; there is a problem, and it boils down to the credibility of the budget.”
She also contended that an economy that was said to be in a mess left a growth of five-point seven percent while the government with all its programs for re-setting growth, jobs, and economic transformation is rather projecting a growth rate of 4.8 percent despite adding close to fifty billion in expenditure to the 2026 budget from this year’s budget.
Kwaku Sakyi-Danso/Ghanamps.com