ghananlpcommunity/ghana-gov-speeches-sentences huggingface dataset:
Mr Speaker, despite the heightened debt levels, Government remains committed to ensuring that debt is brought to sustainable levels over the medium to long-term.
To this end, we will implement a debt exchange programme to address the challenges identified in the portfolio in collaboration with all relevant stakeholders including the Ghanaian public, investor community and development partners.
Furthermore, Government will continue to strengthen its oversight of all SoEs, in particular, financial and energy sectors.
The reforms and discipline at the SoEs will reduce potential fiscal risks from the incidence of contingent liabilities.
Mr Speaker, in line with our objective, to restore debt sustainability, concessional loans will continue to be the preferred financing option for projects.
We, however, recognize that there may be cases where non-concessional borrowing may be required to finance critical transformative projects.
Such financing will be determined within limits that are consistent with our debt sustainability programme.
We will inform this House, at the Mid-Year Fiscal Policy Review, of projects that will be financed within our non-concessional borrowing limits.
Accordingly, we will not publish any list of projects to be financed from external non-concessional loans in this budget, previously titled ‘Appendix 10C’.
Implementation of the Cabinet directives on expenditure measures Mr Speaker, as the first step toward expenditure rationalisation, Government has approved the following directives which takes effect from January 2023: ● All MDAs, MMDAs and SOEs are directed to reduce fuel allocations to Political Appointees and heads of MDAs, MMDAs and SOEs by 50%.
This directive applies to all methods of fuel allocation including coupons, electronic cards, chit system, and fuel depots.
Accordingly, 50% of the previous years (2022) budget allocation for fuel shall be earmarked for official business pertaining to MDAs, MMDAs and SOEs; ● A ban on the use of V8s/V6s or its equivalent except for cross country travel.
All government vehicles would be registered with GV green number plates from January 2023; ● Limited budgetary allocation for the purchase of vehicles.
For the avoidance of doubt, purchase of new vehicles shall be restricted to locally assembled vehicles; ● Only essential official foreign travel across government including SOEs shall be allowed.
No official foreign travel shall be allowed for board members.
Accordingly, all government institutions should submit a travel plan for the year 2023 by mid-December of all expected travels to the Chief of Staff; ● As far as possible, meetings and workshops should be done within the official environment or government facilities; ● Government sponsored external training and Staff Development activities at the Office of the President, Ministries and SOEs must be put on hold for the 2023 financial year; ● Reduction of expenditure on appointments including salary freezes together with suspension of certain allowances like housing, utilities and clothing, etc.
; ● A freeze on new tax waivers for foreign companies and review of tax exemptions for free zone, mining, oil and gas companies; ● A hiring freeze for civil and public servants ● No new government agencies shall be established in 2023; ● There shall be no hampers for 2022; ● There shall be no printing of diaries, notepads, calendars and other promotional merchandise by MDAs, MMDAs and SOEs for 2024; ● All non-critical projects must be suspended for the 2023 Financial year CONCLUSION Mr Speaker, Government cares deeply about our people, and is very much concerned about their current plight and the future of our country.
The 2023 Budget has been prepared with high consideration for the aspirations of Ghanaians and the brighter prospects of our economy to transition into Upper Middle Income within a decade.
It reflects our determination and resolve to confront the current daunting economic challenges facing our nation head-on and reset the economy.
In the immediate term, we will work towards securing an agreement with the International Monetary Fund, executing the debt exchange programme, improving the management of foreign exchange, and supporting our local productive capacity for food security.
We are confident that the measures outlined in this 2023 Budget will redirect us on the path of macroeconomic stability and growth.
Mr Speaker, the mission ahead is for the determined and not the pessimist.
We acknowledge that our people have been severely impacted by the current economic challenges.
As a responsive Government, we have acted swiftly and boldly by developing the PC-PEG and will work with local and international partners to implement it.
Mr Speaker, the 2023 Budget, will focus on Government’s resolve to structurally transform the economy.
We plan to: ● Aggressively mobilise domestic revenue; ● Boost local productive capacity; ● Promote a diversified and vibrant value-added export sector; ● Streamline expenditures; ● Protect the poor and vulnerable; ● Expand digital and physical infrastructure; and ● Implement structural and public sector reforms.
We will continue the implementation of key interventions like the YouStart, Economic Enclaves, 1D1F, and Tech Hubs with the limited resources that we have complemented with the support from Development Bank Ghana.
Specifically, on the YouStart, we intend to support 30,000 youth and under the Economic Enclaves, we intend to develop 110,000 acres of land for rice maize, soya bean as well as poultry.
Funding will be sought from the ¢500 million DBG fund and GoG sources.
We will also be aligning support from our development partners to boost growth in the real sector, focusing mainly on agriculture, entrepreneurship and value-addition.
Mr Speaker, as I have indicated it has become even more urgent to mobilise domestic revenue, especially in times like this when our access to the international capital market is largely closed.
We urgently need to restore debt sustainability, and macro-economic stability and grow the economy.
As a responsible Government, we will take the hard, unpopular, but necessary decisions to build back better and emerge stronger.
Mr Speaker, post-COVID, we identified the need to ramp up our domestic revenue mobilisation efforts to match the performance of our peers and finance our development agenda.
Last year, we started with the E-Levy which has not yielded the resources as expected.
Mr Speaker, we know that we have to: ● Keep the lights on at the cost of $1 billion annually; ● keep the hospitals running and ensure that the over 15.5m Ghanaians on NHIS are properly catered for; ● Keep our schools running and pay the over 300,000 teachers every month; ● Keep our hospitals running and pay the over 119,000 nurses every month; ● Keep the law courts open and ensure timely access to justice; and ● Keep the local assemblies working to deliver essential social services to our people.
Mr Speaker, it has also become clear that we cannot take the territorial integrity and internal cohesion of our country for granted.
In the last couple of years, we have invested significantly in retooling the security sector to maintain territorial integrity and improve internal security (we have procured CCTV cameras, motor bicycles, vehicles, Forward Operating Bases, and recruitment of security personnel among other interventions).
We can all attest that police visibility has increased tremendously.
Mr Speaker, our ability to continue to deliver all these critical public services will require significant resources and we believe that together we can raise the necessary revenues to implement them.
Mr Speaker, the demand for roads has become the cry of many communities in the country.
Unfortunately, with the current economic difficulties and the absence of a dedicated source of funding for road construction, it is difficult to meet these demands.
In that regard, we are proposing the implementation of new revenue measures.
The major one is an increase in the VAT rate by 2.5 percentage points.
This increase is expected to yield GHc2.70 billion which will be used to augment funding for our road infrastructure development.
This will be complemented by a major compliance programme to ensure that we derive the maximum yields from existing revenue handles.
Mr Speaker, in this Budget, we have highlighted the need for robust public sector reforms to complement the existing public financial management regime.
Here, the focus is to introduce private sector participation in the retail sub-sector of the Energy Sector to reduce system losses and improve the delivery of service for Ghanaians.
Mr Speaker, this afternoon, the senior National Team, the Black Stars, will be representing our nation for the fourth time at the Football World Cup in Qatar.
Let us continue to bear them in prayers and offer our support.
Working together after missing the last tournament, we have risen again and taken our place on the world stage.
Mr Speaker, we must be inspired by the re-emergence of the Black Stars on the world stage.
We must work together to ensure that our economy rises again to the comfort of our people.
This Budget offers us a better opportunity to jointly work towards rebuilding the economy and rediscovering our providential way towards our manifest destiny.
Together let us arise!
Mr Speaker, let us not squander the opportunity to turn around, reset our economy and create a bright medium-term for our country and its people.
This is the time to rebuild, not to destroy and tear down.
Let us work together for our collective benefit as is said in Nehemiah 2:18, with unity of purpose, service to the Republic, and the abiding grace of God Mr Speaker, I repeat, Mr.
Speaker, N) fiaa n) baa hi!!
Mr Speaker, let us go forward, believing in the assurance of the Psalmist that “For the sake of the house of the LORD our God, I will seek your prosperity”.
Mr Speaker, I present to you the ‘NKABOM’ Budget.
I beg to move.
The Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, Dr Dominic Ayine has presented the position of Government on the recommendations made by the Constitution Review Committee.
He presented this during the Government Accountability Series on July 30 at the Jubilee House.
Please read full statement below: PRESS BRIEFING BY THE ATTORNEY GENERAL & MINISTER FOR JUSTICE, DR DOMINIC AKURITINGA AYINE ON THE POSITION OF GOVERNMENT ON THE FINAL RECOMMENDATIONS OF THE CONSTITUTION REVIEW COMMITTEE ACCRA JULY 30, 2026 Ladies and Gentlemen of the Media, My Fellow countrymen and women, 1.
I am here this afternoon to speak to the sovereign people of Ghana on the position of the Government of His Excellency John Dramani Mahama on the final recommendations of the Constitution Review Committee.
The recommendations of the CRC were carefully considered by Cabinet on three occasions, including the dedication of an entire weekend retreat presided over by the President of the Republic.
You would recall that on January 19, 2025, His Excellency the President appointed an eight-member committee chaired by Professor H. Kwasi Prempeh to undertake a comprehensive review of the 1992 Constitution.
The Committee was inaugurated on January 30, 2025, and thereafter went straight to work on the task assigned to it.
Over the course of nearly one year, the Committee- a. Organized ten (10) thematic stakeholder engagements involving over 500 experts and practitioners in law and governance; b. Held engagements with identifiable groups, reaching over 21, 500 people; c. Consulted 11 eminent persons, including former Presidents of the Republic, who were closely involved in constitutional developments in the country; and d. Received and reviewed 785 written submissions from members of the public.
On December 22, 2025, the Committee presented a summary of its recommendations to the President of the Republic.
Subsequently, on February 10, 2026, the Committee submitted its full report containing the final recommendations.
The Report is titled “Transforming Ghana- From Electoral Democracy to Developmental Democracy”.
The Report is very comprehensive, well-researched and reflects the consultative approach adopted by the Committee in accordance with its terms of reference.
It contains 147 proposals for amendment of the Constitution and about 59 proposals which are entirely new provisions, bringing the total of proposed amendments to 206.
On behalf of the Government of H. E. John Dramani Mahama, I wish to thank Professor H. Kwasi Prempeh and the eminent members of his committee as well as the Secretariat of the Committee for the excellent work done for our dear country and its citizens.
Their names will forever be etched with indelible ink in the annals of Ghanaian history.
Ladies and Gentlemen of the Media, My Fellow countrymen and women, 6.
I wish to make it clear from the outset that this is not a Government White Paper.
The reason is that the work of the Committee was not technically the work of a commission of inquiry pursuant to Chapter 23 of the Constitution.
If that were the case, Government would have had a constitutional obligation to either publish the report of the commission of inquiry together with a White Paper or give reasons why it would not publish the report.
The position of Government in respect of the recommendations of the Committee is formulated in three ways- acceptance, acceptance in principle subject to modification or non-acceptance of the recommendation.
Where Government accepts the recommendation of the Committee in principle subject to modification, we provide reasons for why we seek to modify the recommendation.
Reasons are also accorded where Government does not accept the recommendation of the Committee.
In formulating its position on the final recommendations of the Committee, Government examined each recommendation against the relevant provisions of the Constitution to assess the nature, scope and implications of the proposed amendment.
Each recommendation was then subjected to rigorous constitutional and legal analysis, including whether it touched on entrenched or non-entrenched provisions of the Constitution and whether its underlying objective could be achieved through other legislative or administrative means.
We also examined the recommendations in light of the work of prior constitutional reform commissions or committees, such as the Report of the 2010 Constitution Review Commission, in order to ensure continuity and consistency in the reform process.
As I have noted earlier, when I submitted the draft position paper to Cabinet, extensive deliberations were held and each recommendation was interrogated, weighed against the practical experiences of our country and refined before Cabinet granted approval to the position paper.
I have underscored the importance of this process in order to highlight the fact that the Position Paper being published today is not the product of one Ministry or Department of Government or a group of technocrats working in a corner.
On the contrary, it is the product of the considered thoughts of the men and women who have been given the honour to run the affairs of our country within the executive arm of Government.
Before I turn to the highlights of the recommendations accepted or not accepted by Government, indulge me a little to turn to the principles that guided the formulation of Government’s position on the final report of the Committee.
First, Government took the view that with the Constitution being the supreme law of the land, any attempt to amend it must be done with caution.
Therefore, recommendations that were considered insignificant for their normative value were not accepted for constitutional amendment.
The Constitution is the statement of our foundational values and structure and not an operations manual designed to troubleshoot every problem in our society.
Secondly, and this flows from the first consideration, only changes that definitely required constitutional amendment were accepted.
Where 3 the objective of a proposed amendment is best achieved through ordinary legislative or administrative action, Government chose the alternative route.
This approach was also animated by the fact that an ordinary statute can be amended by Parliament as circumstances change.
Not so with the Constitution.
My Fellow countrymen and women: 12.
Permit me now to turn to some of the key highlights of the government’s position on the various recommendations.
President 13.
The Government has accepted the recommendation to extend the term of office of the President from four years to five years, with the term of Parliament extended to correspond with this.
Our thinking is practical.
Under the current four-year cycle, the early months of every administration are consumed by transition, and the final year is largely consumed by elections.
That leaves precious little time for actual governance.
A five-year term provides a more realistic timeframe for the formulati on, implementation, and assessment of policy.
For the avoidance of doubt, this recommendation, if carried through, will be in respect of future Presidents, not the current one.
Still on the Presidency, the Committee recommended that the minimum age of eligibility for election as President be reduced from forty years to thirty years.
The Government has accepted this recommendation in principle, subject to one modification: the minimum age will be thirty-five years, not thirty.
The current threshold of forty excludes qualified citizens from seeking the highest office on the basis of an arbitrary age line.
Thirty-five is consistent with the trend in modern democratic constitutions towards greater inclusivity, while ensuring that a candidate for the highest office has attained a measure of maturity and experience.
We have also accepted that the Presidential election be held on a day in the first week of November, as the Electoral Commission may specify by constitutional instrument.
A fixed period gives certainty to the electoral 4 calendar.
It allows the Commission, the parties and observers to plan, and it ensures an adequate interval between the election and the inauguration of the incoming President on January 7.
On Presidential election petitions, the Government has accepted that a petition must be filed within fourteen days of the declaration of results and determined by the Supreme Court within thirty days, with the Electoral Commission obliged to disclose all relevant election data to the court and the parties.
We take this position because the timely resolution of election disputes inures well to the stability of our democratic transitions and to the general political stability of our country.
The Government has accepted the principle that the President should not enjoy tax exemptions by virtue of office alone.
The President will pay tax on salary and allowances, as well as the applicable indirect taxes on goods and services.
The Government has not, however, accepted the proposal to tax the President’s retirement gratuity and pension, and the details of the President’s tax liability will be worked out in the tax laws, where such details belong.
Parliament 18.
The Government has accepted that the size of Parliament be capped, and we propose a ceiling of 300 members.
Of these, 276 will be elected directly in constituency elections like we already have.
The remaining 24 will be elected through proportional representation among women, persons with disabilities, and the youth.
An independent study will be commissioned into the design of the proportional representation element.
Capping Parliament saves cost, and the reserved element opens the door of our legislature wider to those our politics has historically kept on the outside.
The Government has also accepted the recommendation on dual citizenship.
A citizen of Ghana by birth who holds the citizenship of another country will no longer be barred from contesting for election to Parliament, only on account of his/her dual citizenship and will not be required to renounce the other citizenship.
The current disqualification sits uneasily with our engagement with our diaspora and with the realities of modern citizenship.
The Judiciary 20.
Regarding the Judiciary, two positions deserve mention.
First, the Government supports a fixed tenure for the Chief Justice: a single, nonrenewable term of ten years, or until the retirement age, whichever occurs first.
This ensures predictable transitions at the head of the Judiciary and removes the risk of prolonged or indefinite occupancy of that high office.
Second, the Government supports capping the Supreme Court’s membership.
The Committee recommended a cap of fifteen Justices.
The Government proposes nineteen, that is, the Chief Justice and eighteen others.
A cap promotes efficiency and manages public expenditure, while a bench of nineteen remains sufficiently robust to discharge the Court’s constitutional mandate.
Political Parties 22.
The Committee recommended an amendment to Article 55 to require every registered political party to afford its members in good standing equal voting rights in the selection of its Parliamentary and Presidential candidates.
The Government has accepted this recommendation.
Just yesterday, the Supreme Court, in the case of Prof.
Frimpong Boateng and Others v NPP, NDC and Others, held that all registered members of political parties should be allowed to take part in their internal elections.
And therefore, on this question, the Committee, the Government, and the Supreme Court now speak with one voice.
Political parties are the vehicles through which we choose those who govern us.
They cannot themselves be governed by the few.
Relatedly, the Committee recommended an independent body to register and regulate political parties, in place of the Electoral Commission’s current role.
The Government accepts this in principle.
We prefer, however, the designation Political Parties Regulatory Commission to the nomenclature of a “Registrar and Regulator”.
The Commission will be established through legislation, and matters such as campaign financing and the proposed Democracy Fund will be addressed in that legislation, providing the flexibility a rapidly evolving field demand.
Local Government 24.
On the election of District Chief Executives, the Government has gone further than the Committee.
The Committee recommended a phased approach, under which the right to elect a DCE would be tied to a district’s fiscal capacity, so that some districts would vote and others would not.
The Government takes the position that all District Chief Executives should be elected.
Creating a distinction between voting and non-voting districts carries significant political costs and may be perceived as discriminatory against citizens.
Under the Government’s proposal, the President will nominate five persons, two of whom shall be women.
Out of the five, three will be shortlisted, one of whom shall be a woman, after vetting by a committee drawn from the Ministry of Local Government, the Public Services Commission and the Local Government Service.
Those three will then be the candidates for election as District Chief Executive.
Article 71 Officeholders and Public Financial Management 26.
To deal with the question of the emoluments of article 71 office holders, the Government has also accepted the establishment of an Independent Public Emoluments Commission to determine the salaries, allowances, facilities and privileges of public officers generally, including the President and other Article 71 officeholders.
The current arrangement, under which a committee appointed by the President determines the emoluments of officeholders including the President, creates a structural conflict of interest and has been a persistent source of public dissatisfaction.
An independent commission will bring transparency and equity to this matter once and for all.
On public financial management, the Committee made far-reaching proposals: the classification and annual reporting of tax exemptions as tax expenditures, safeguards on the Contingency Fund, a medium-term economic framework laid before Parliament, debt anchors and fiscal sustainability rules, and an Independent Fiscal Council.
The Government shares the concerns underlying every one of these proposals.