I support calls for government to cut expenditure – Kweku Kwarteng

Chairman of Parliament’s Finance Committee, Kweku Kwarteng, has supported calls for government to cut down on expenditure.

According to him, despite the government recently passing three revenue measures, these revenue measures are a long way to translate into actual revenue and it is not set in stone that the government’s revenue targets will be achieved.

He said, calls for government expenditure cuts have also been chorused by some government creditors at the ongoing IMF meeting in Washington, US, and this he believes is the right way to go.

Speaking on PM Express Business Edition on Joynews, he said, “I agree, I agree that where we are, and the investors are telling us a bit of that. Some of our creditors are telling us that they also need us to consider expenditure cuts, and I support that call.

“And I think as government, I’m part of government, I think we should consider which areas of expenditure we can cut because whether we have gotten an IMF programme, as I indicated earlier we would seek to get revenue from the revenue measures that  we have deployed.

“If not for anything at all, we know that those revenue measures delayed. And when I was in the ministry, I was working with the GRA in respect of the revenues, and I know that revenue measures are not revenue. So you can have the measures, whether they’ll come in is another matter.”

He noted that while parliament has been supportive of the government to pass the revenue measures in order to secure an IMF deal, going forward, parliament will no longer act as a rubber stamp to the whims and caprices of the executive.

He stated that while parliament cannot be solely blamed for the current economic mishap, it takes part responsibility and assured the general public that the house, going forward, will do everything in its power to ensure that serious measures are taken to prevent a repeat of this economic meltdown in Ghana’s foreseeable future.

“We will do all we can to support those measures to succeed but where there’s a shortfall, we must immediately move to cut expenditure. And unless we do that, it will be business as usual, something that many of us going forward will not support,” he said.

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