Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta will today present before Parliament the government’s 2018 Mid-Year Budget Review.

According to the Public Financial Management Act, the Finance Minister is required not later than July 31 of each financial year to update parliament on some critical developments on the economy.

This includes Macro-economic numbers, how revenue and expenditure fared over the first six months of the year as well as the outlook for the rest of the year. 

There is also an avenue for Supplementary Budget if the need be. 

Fiscal Data secured by JoyBusiness showed that the government missed out on revenue target for the first five months of this year. 

This resulted in revenue going down by GH¢1.6 billion cedis to reach GH¢17.4 billion.   

It is expected that Mr Ofori-Atta would come out with some new measures that would help improve tax compliance, this would result in revenue officials going up to individuals and companies that have been avoiding taxes and using what some have described a data mining across the various agencies.

Fiscal measures

Deputy Information Minister, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah says the Finance Minister would announce some non -fiscal measures to improve revenue.

He told JoyBusiness, “We should also expect some very exciting announcements on some items that are being rolled out that don’t exactly pass through our Fiscals but impact on the development of the people. It’s part of the government’s economic policy that the finance minister will be speaking to as well."

Mr Oppong Nkrumah added, “The things am talking about do not pass through fiscals, VAT passes through Fiscals. You should expect some announcement also on activities that are going to be rolled out that don’t even pass through our fiscals but impact on development.”

Highlights of the 2017 Budget