A senior fellow of the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), Dr Kwadwo Tutu, has called for strict monitoring of the preparation and implementation of the country's budget to ensure that a greater part of the deficits is channelled into the productive sectors of the economy. He said it was unacceptable for the country to record huge deficits in the budget without much spending in the productive sectors which would ensure growth and stability in the economy. Speaking to the Daily Graphic after delivering a lecture on the topic "Budget Deficit, Growth and legislative Oversight in Ghana", he said if the productive sectors of the economy such as agriculture and employment generation, railways, road construction, among others, gave rise to budget deficits, the country would be better off. He said where budget deficits occurred as a result of overspending in unproductive sectors of the economy, growth would be stifled while macroeconomic stability would also be threatened. For over four decades, Ghana has run budget deficits; "From 1970 to 2009, that is for forty years, Ghana has had budget surplus for only eight years," Dr Tutu said. In 2008 for instance, the country recorded one of its worse deficits since independence with a budget deficit of more than 14 per cent. The situation alarmed not only the international community but Ghanaians in general. According to Dr Tutu, generally, budget deficits were detrimental to the growth of the economy as deficits were expected to increase interest rates, reduce investment, cause inflation, appreciate the exchange rate, lead to trade deficits and worsen the balance of payments, among others, and noted that this must be avoided. He noted that as much as this conclusion was not supposed to hold in all instances, there were certain cases depending on the level of development of the country; budget deficits could assist the growth of the economy. "More important is the sectors where budget deficits go; If budget deficits go to the productive sectors of the economy, they would lead to growth of the economy", he said. Dr Tutu said "In Ghana where agriculture is still using the hoe, six per cent irrigation, inadequate accessibility to inputs, credits, markets, where railways do not exist and roads are woefully inadequate, where there is very little accessibility to water even in the cities, where electricity is a problem, where fuelwood and charcoal are main sources of fuel for the majority, where average productive job creation was 26,000 over 2001-2009 and where over 200,000 graduates come out of scho.ols each year, responsible budget deficits going to the productive sectors to address these problems will boost the growth of the economy". He reiterated that for this to be addressed there should be monitoring of the implementation of the budget. Dr Tutu said Parliament must ensure that a greater part of the deficits went into productive sectors and programmes. To enable them to do the monitoring more effectively, he said Parliament needed to be adequately resourced to have the capacity to undertake effective monitoring of the implementation of the budget to ensure that allocated budgets were efficiently applied. Source: Daily Graphic