Ghana-budget
   Ghana's new government to unveil maiden budget

   ACCRA, March 9 (AFP) - Ghana's new government, elected to power in
January,
was Friday due to present its first budget, which is widely expected to
include harsh steps to curb galloping inflation and tackle a huge debt
burden.
   Finance Minister Yaw Osafo-Maafo will present the budget for the
January-December 2001 fiscal year in the wake of pronouncements by the new
administration that years of economic mismanagement would now end.
   Ghana's new president President John Kufuor has said his predecessor
Jerry
Rawlings had left Ghana, once hailed as a model economy in west Africa, in
a
shambles.
   In his maiden speech he spoke of "mismanagement, mass unemployment, low
wages, high cost of living, a rapidly depreciating currency, a colossal
national debt, high dependency on foreign aid."
   Other problems included "declining educational and health opportunities,
extensive corruption in public life, a cowed and demoralised private
sector,
hopelessness and despair."
   Kufuor's government last week raised petroleum prices by 64 percent to
1.71
dollars a gallon, claiming that the Rawlings government had subsidised them
to
a ridiculous level.
   Officials said the subsidies caused the government to lose a huge amount
of
money since last March.
   Kufuor has said that provisional figures indicated that the growth of
real
gross domestic product, which gives an indication of the performance of the
economy, in the year 2000 was 3.7 percent -- far lower than the projected
five
percent target.
   He said the total debt stock was 41.1 trillion cedis at the end of
December
2000, adding: "Out this amount 31.7 trillion, or 5.8 billion dollars, was
external and 9.4 trillion cedis, or 1.7 billion US dollars, was domestic."
   The new president has promised to clean up governance and launch
incentives
to step up investment, especially from expatriate Ghanaians, who last year
sent remittances worth around 300 million dollars.
   ben-ach/nb

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