Government's financial statement for the year 2005 will not be presented next week, as scheduled. Government says this has become necessary because of unforseen circumstances. The budget is now expected to be presented in the fourth week of February.

The resceduling of the budget presentation has not gone down well with minority NDC members of parliament. They say the new date will not afford sufficient time for parliamentary debate of the budget. Deputy Minority Leader, Doe Adjaho told parliament that the Executive needs to bring the Budget to the House early enough to enable the House to have ample time to scrutinise it before approval.

Mr Adjaho was reacting to the "Business Statement" for next week presented by the Deputy Majority Leader, Mr Abraham Ossei-Aidoo. Mr Ossei-Aidoo told the House that the Budget would not be presented to Parliament next week as initially planned. It would rather be presented during the fourth week of February.

Parliament is expected to go on recess in March. Mr Adjaho said there would not be enough time for the House to go through the Budget and approve the estimates for the Ministries, Departments and Agencies.

"We have less than one month to debate and scrutinise monies that would be going to Ministries, Departments and Agencies....I can't see how we can do any serious work," Mr Adjaho said.