A Ranking Member on the Finance Committee of Parliament, Dr. Cassiel Ato Forson, says the 2022 budget was the straw that broke the back of Ghana’s international commercial investors.

According to him, prior to the reading of the 2022 budget, investors had already started losing confidence in the country considering Ghana’s unsustainable debt levels and fiscal policies.

He noted that the 2022 budget was supposed to be the saving grace the country needed to convince investors to retain their trust and money in the country while the economy recovered.

However, following the reading of the budget, investors were convinced it was too risky to continue investing in the country thus discontinued.

Speaking on JoyNews’ PM Express, Dr. Ato Forson said, “Unfortunately, the day that the 2022 budget was read, investors got even angrier because they saw an unrealistic budget assumption and they said ‘what is this? Do this people think we’re kids?’ and you can go back and plug, you will see that the yields with our bonds before and after the budget was read became very huge, anybody can see it.”

He added, “It’s not because of the e-levy. In fact it was far before the budget was rejected and the e-levy was subsequently rejected. This was on the day the budget was read. Investors reacted and said that we’re not seeing what we have to see.”

According to him, the 2022 budget will go down in history as the worst budget in the 4^th Republic.

“So if you ask me, the 2022 budget will go down as the budget that lost the confidence of Ghanaian investors. It is the budget that has done us in, and it will stand to be the worst budget in the history of this Republic.

“That is a fact, because the evidence is there to show, the budget was prepared with only one major fiscal assumption e-levy, that it will bring in excess of 1% of GDP, in fact about 1.5% of GDP in terms of quantum of tax revenue,” he said.

“In fact Ghana’s yields on the day that the budget was read got worse than the day that the e-levy was rejected. And this one it is for everyone to see, you can go to Bloomberg terminal and plug it, the graph is there for everybody to see it,” he stressed.