Isaac Adongo, a member of parliament from the Bolgatanga Central Constituency, stated on Monday, July 31, that he had to get up to wake his colleagues up as Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta was reading the mid-year budget review in Parliament.
Adongo said this happened while Ofori-Atta was going over the budget for the first half of the year.
He claimed that everyone who was yelling “Yeah yeah” during the presentation had actually been dozing off during it.
Adongo describes Ofori-Atta’s mid-year budget review as ‘funeral dirge’
The National Democratic Congress (NDC) made this information public after the presentation of the 2023 budget review by the Minister of Finance.
Mr. Ofori-Atta had stated that there would be no supplementary budget, but he did conduct a thorough evaluation of the revenue targets and the growth rate of the gross domestic product (GDP).
The Minority did not feel enthusiastic about anything.
“We all listened to the funeral dirge,” the Ranking Member on the Finance Committee told the journalists. “We all listened to the funeral dirge.”
“At some point, I was required to wake up and ask them to emerge from their slumber in order to pay attention to the speaking man.
“When they finally stood up and responded, ‘Yeah Yeah,’ it turned out that they had been sleeping. As a result, I was taken aback when they abruptly woke up and started shouting, despite the fact that they had not heard the man speaking.
The MP was extremely critical of the Bank of Ghana in regard to the ostensible weakening of the economy, stating that “the Bank of Ghana, as we speak today, cannot undertake monetary policy without printing money because it does not have money, yet you say you have turned the corner.”
However, Mr. Ofori-Atta argued to the House of Representatives that the government has reached a turning point.
“This “turning the corner” is underpinned by the investments and sacrifices we have collectively made during this difficult period since March 2020,” the author writes.