2026 Budget debate: Majority says it gives hope: Take it with pinch of salt

The Majority and Minority members of Parliament past Friday shared contrasting views of the 2026 fund statement, with the Majority touting it arsenic offering a deeper consciousness of anticipation and the Minority informing Ghanaians to instrumentality the connection with a pinch of salt.

Contributing to the statement connected the fund connection past Friday, the NDC MP for Wa West, Peter Lanchene Toobu, said the 2026 fund was anchored connected a coagulated imaginativeness to physique a prosperous, fair, antiauthoritarian Ghana, anchored and adjacent accidental for all.

“Mr Speaker, I americium excited that this is simply a fund of hope”, helium said, adding that the existent fund did not travel with immoderate slogans and biblical quotations to mislead the people.

Countering, the New Patriotic Party MP for Offinso South, Dr Isaac Yaw Opoku, said Ghanaians wanted the NDC to bash an audit and archer them which of the promises they intended to support and which ones they intended to abandon.

He recalled how, successful spite of saccharine promises the NDC made to cocoa farmers successful the run-up to the 2024 elections, including expanding cocoa workplace gross prices, they continually failed to honour the promise.

Ghanaians surviving with dignity

Leading the argument, Mr Toobu said it had go wide that the Minority often waxed lyrically portion successful absorption with immoderate superb ideas but erstwhile they recovered themselves successful government, it was “always a disaster”.

He said helium could not judge that the erstwhile medication could bargain craft for the Ghana Police Service and “as we sit, you person ne'er seen 1 flying”.

“And they person the guts to beryllium talking astir craft arsenic if they person the cognition of what to do,” helium said

He said the 2026 fund was anchored connected a coagulated imaginativeness successful which “we question a federation wherever each Ghanaian tin unrecorded with dignity, gain a decent livelihood and lend to a aboriginal that reflects our shared values and corporate ambition.”

With respect to retooling the equipped forces and the information sector, Mr Toobu, who is the Vice-Chairperson of the Defence and Interior Committee, said the NDC authorities was bent connected retooling the Ghana Armed Forces due to the fact that the equipped forces “is our pride”.

He said the authorities would acquisition 2 much craft (one long-range and 1 medium-range) and 2 offshore patrol vessels for the Navy.

Deceitful promises

In a antagonistic argument, Dr Opoku, who is the Ranking Member connected the Food, Agriculture and Cocoa Affairs Committee, asked Ghanaians to commune for erstwhile President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo since helium was the 1 who moved the workplace gross terms of cocoa from GH¢475 to GH¢3,100 per bag.

“Mr Speaker, contiguous a dying manufacture and an insolvent manufacture has received $2.6 cardinal successful deposits,” helium said, quoting paragraph 292 of the 2025 fund statement. He besides described how Majority MPs, during the fund presentation, became excited since the accumulation of cocoa had gone from 530,783 to 603,840 metric tonnes.

He, therefore, said if the cocoa manufacture was going to collapse, it would bash truthful nether the NDC and not the NPP.

For 33 years, helium argued, COCOBOD was borrowing from the planetary marketplace to concern its operations and President Akufo-Addo tasked COCOBOD to make a exemplary to marque it self-financing.