Minister of State at the Ministry of Finance, Dr. Mohammed Amin Adam says the government is committed to spending within its budgetary limits.

According to him, a failure to remain within the budgetary limits will increase the country’s deficit levels and thus affect Ghana’s chances at meeting the International Monetary Fund’s deficit requirement.

As a result, he said the government through the Finance Ministry has set up expenditure controls to check spending in all agencies of the government.

“The minister has already set up a budget implementation standing committee which I chair, and that is supposed to ensure that whatever we spend on is approved, and whatever we spend on goes through a very rigorous process of approval so that we can keep our spending within our budget.

“If we will have any spending beyond the budget that will increase our deficit levels then we may not be able to meet the IMF requirement of deficit. We’re supposed to record about 1.5% of primary balance and to be able to do that will require very significant fiscal discipline,” he said.

He added that the country is also supposed to undergo a front loaded fiscal adjustment of about 5.1 percentage points.

“You know, that is huge and it demands discipline, it demands hard work. And so we are sensitizing every sector of government including SOEs, and this is the reason why they all now are brought under the GIFMIS including the statutory funds, they’re all brought through the GIFMIS in order to give us visibility and also to ensure that we control the spending by every agent of government,” he said.