The Akufo-Addo government will not roll back the gains made on the free senior high school programme, the Minister of Finance, Ken Ofori-Atta has said.
“Let me say this, President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has absolutely no intention to roll back on a major policy like Free SHS.
“We see education as the best enabler for sustainable economic growth and transformation and will do more to improve on it for it to serve more and better our children,” Mr Ofori-Atta said at a press briefing in Accra Thursday afternoon [march 24, 2022].
He was speaking on measures to address the current economic challenges and elaborated on a number of expenditure cutting measures.
He spoke about how the government had already started the new year with spending cuts as Parliament failed to approve key revenue streams at the appropriate time.
In January 2022, the government announced and, immediately, began implementing a 20% expenditure cut as part of fiscal stabilisation and debt sustainability measures.
This, Mr Ofori-Atta said has been done through the quarterly expenditure ceiling allotments to Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs).
He said Quarter 1 allotment is currently under implementation whiles Q2 allotments will be issued shortly.
He said the ministry has strengthened its Expenditure Monitoring systems and processes to ensure effective implementation of these measures.
In addition, he said the government has decided to take measures to ensure the achievement of the fiscal deficit target of 7.4 percent of GDP for 2022.
