The Minority in Parliament has expressed disappointment over the absence of concrete plans for the much-publicized 24-hour economy in the 2025 budget statement, describing it as a major letdown for Ghanaians.
“Given the hype about the government’s 24-hour economy, the 2025 Budget failed to even provide basic details of the program to the taxpayer. There is no programme in the budget on that. In fact, the minister said he will soon launch the policy. There is no money voted for it in the budget. So Ghanaians will have to wait until 2026 if we are lucky then we can have hope of seeing how this main campaign slogan can translate into jobs,” the Minority stated.
Drawing comparisons, they argued that the NPP swiftly implemented its Free SHS policy in President Akufo-Addo’s first budget in 2017, while the NDC appears to be in no rush to fulfill its own flagship promise.
“This is worrisome particularly when it has huge fiscal implications on the wage bill and goods and services. Yet, expenditure projections have been magically cut for goods and services and no provision made to accommodate its impact on the wage bill. This makes us very weary and skeptical about the credibility of the 2025 budget numbers.”
The Minority also took issue with the government’s expenditure measures, particularly the uncapping of transfers to some statutory funds. They questioned the decision to allow the GETFund to finance Free SHS, arguing that the move is neither innovative nor new.
“Every government has at its discretion how to fund its programmes. While we capped the transfers to the statutory funds and used the capped funds to fund Free SHS and other programmes, this NDC government has decided to uncap transfers to the GETFund so that GETFund will fund Free SHS. How on earth is this brilliant?”
They also criticized the allocation of the Annual Budget Funding Amount (ABFA) to the “Big Push” capital expenditure, noting that such decisions must be backed by amendments to the Petroleum Revenue Management Act (PRMA) or other relevant laws.
