VIDEO: Terkper Indentifies Major Causes Of Ghana's Fiscal Deficits

For the last couple of months, Ghana, has suffered series of external shocks resulting in the country being plagued with economic challenges whiles struggling with its fiscal deficit. The Minister in charge of Finance and Economic Planning, Seth Terkper, in an interview with Javier Blas of the Financial Times, explained the steps being taken to consolidate the country�s financing and reassure the markets. According to him, measures to control fiscal discipline have been presented to parliament to see how best the problem can be resolved. Speaking to the issues of overrun in budget deficit, Hon Seth Terkper identified six major causes and listed them as 1. the destruction of gas supply 2. the fall in gold and cocoa prices 3. the country could only realize 83,000 of crude oil although an estimate of 90,000 was made. 4. finally, was the wage policy He, however, explained that during the IMF Africa Rising Conference, Ghana and the IMF carried out certain vital consultations and as part of this President Mahama has �asked us to submit the measures that we are implementing on our own to the IMF board�the board has suggested that we should do a couple of things which include improving all the timeline for achieving some of our goals within our medium term. In fact we are finished with that and we would be submitting it to the development partners, markets and to the IMF.� Below is a video of Mr. Seth Terkper Being Interviewed by Javier Blas