Minority MPs in Parliament have accused the government of swapping the budget presented in parliament by Finance Minister Seth Terkper with an alien document for discussions.
The MPs of the New Patriotic Party, who have vowed to resist the introduction of the document, said Government is trying to smuggle things into the budget, a charge government has fiercely rejected.
Ranking member on the Finance Committee, Dr Anthony Akoto Osei, who led the NPP legislators indicated that: “I have an old version of the budget statement and this is what I have been working with all weekend, and I was ready to debate with this old version. Unknown to me, the Ministry has withdrawn the old one and asked that members to go for a new version of the budget and they [Majority] were saying we [Minority] are not ready to debate. Meanwhile, they have a different version of the budget they are going to debate on”.
But responding to the issue, the Deputy Minister of Finance, Cassiel Ato Forson said that “what the minister of finance laid before parliament is not different from the new copies distributed”.
According to him, Government only corrected errors related to the arrangement of the pages of the budget document circulated to the members of parliament, adding that none of the estimates in the document have been altered in anyway.
