Ranking Member on Parliament’s Finance Committee, Dr. Cassiel Ato Forson has criticised the measures announced by the government to mitigate the prevailing economic hardship.

Dr. Forson said the measures are “woefully inadequate”.

Speaking on Top Story, Wednesday, he explained that the magnitude of the economic challenges in the country cannot be resolved by the solutions espoused thus, they leave much to be desired.

Government has announced measures including a 30% cut in salaries of appointees, the reopening of the country’s land borders within two weeks, the 17% policy rate introduced by the Bank of Ghana and an injection of $2billion to rescue the cedi.

But reacting to these measures, the former Deputy Finance Minister said “the 30% pay cut for me is nothing but cosmetic.”

“The elephant in the room is not just a 30% pay cut for government appointees. In fact, it is now time for us to cut almost a thousand workers at the Office of the President, all of whom are Article 71 officeholders,” he noted.

According to him, the economic challenges present the time for the government to merge some subvented agencies and ministries.

Meanwhile, the Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta, will address the nation on Thursday, March 24, on measures instituted by government to resolve the economic challenges in the country.

But the Ajumako Enyan Essiam MP insists that the press conference to be held by the Minister is “needless”.

He believes that the Finance Minister must appear before the House with an elaborate statement on government’s measures for Members of Parliament to scrutinise.

“That is the time that we will ask the needed questions. For example, we want him to tell us the cost for all of us, so that we would be able to know the savings to be made as a result of the pay cut. We want to know at this time, is he still going on a borrowing spree for the purposes of financing frivolous expenditure, by this time I expect the Minister responsible for Finance to announce a freeze on new contracts, a freeze on new loans, a freeze on most of these flagship projects that they talk about,” he stated.

Economist Prof. Lord Mensah has also suggested to government to inject the $2billion rather into the forex market as a form of assurance to investors in the dollar market.

“…at least we have the dollars so if you are in need of it, you can change so that in future you buy it at a particular price,” he said on Top Story, Wednesday.