The government says it has made adequate budgetary provisions to ensure the sustenance of the Single Spine Pay Policy (SSPP). A Deputy Minister of Finance and Economic Planning, Mr Seth Terkpeh, told the Daily Graphic in Accra that the cost of financing the SSPP had been included in the medium-term framework of the 2011 Budget, while the government explored other sources of revenue to sustain the implementation of the new salaries, which is expected to match public sector salaries with the private sector and also correct distortions. Mr Terkpeh said the government was about to start the implementation of an efficient revenue and expenditure management system that would improve the quality of government expenditure so as to save more funds in government coffers to back the single spine salary policy. In addition, the Deputy Minister said the ongoing fiscal reforms, including the stricter enforcement of the legal regime such as the Financial Administration Act, the implementation of an integrated government financial management system and the evaluation of systems and procedures of expenditure within ministries, departments and agencies to ensure the quality of government expenditure and determine inflows in time, would all improve government revenue position that would help accommodate the policy cost implications. "We are at the implementation stage of the Ghana Integrated Financial Management Information System (GIFMIS), to improve budget and financial accounting systems within government and government agencies. This can check expenditure overruns," the Deputy Minister stated Government budget currently operates on the medium-term framework, but the deputy minister said the government would introduce a performance-based budgeting for ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs). This kind of budgeting places emphasis on the quality of programmes and projects that the MDAs propose to undertake and comes across as a more efficient kind of budgeting. Mr Terkpeh said the reforms also included the establishment of the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA), which had integrated all the revenue collecting agencies to harmonise operations, cut waste, improve monitoring and enhance domestic revenue generation. "Next year, we will return to a more robust growth path but we will be prudent, so the growth will be done without sacrificing the stability achieved," the deputy minister said. The Ministry of Finance has started budget hearings with some ministries and agencies to gather preliminary information. The processes will be followed quickly to enable the-government to present the budget in due course. Mr Terkpeh dismissed accusations that the government was neither spending nor settling its bills, saying it was spending prudently in areas necessity for economic growth. "We are spending but we cannot do it to crowd out the private sector, as spending at unsustainable levels can crowd out the private sector," he stated. He added that the government was keeping pace with acceptable levels, of domestic borrowing through the Bank of Ghana and the figure was currently less than 10 per cent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). On hedging, the Deputy Finance Minister said the government had decided to hedge the price at which it would buy crude oil in future so that consumers do not suffer unnecessary effects of price hikes. Source: Daily Graphic