Finance Minster advised to include all 16 regions in national tax revenue mobilization
The Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta, has been advised to come out with clear cut strategies to ensure that the other 15 regions aside from the Greater Accra Region contribute to national tax revenue.
The Greater Accra Region contributes 90% of the nation’s total tax revenue with the other 15 regions contributing the rest of the 10%, the Finance Minister has revealed.
Chief Finance Officer of the Valley View University, Dr. Williams Peprah, reacting to the comment of the Finance Minister, noted that accruing more revenue from the other regions will reduce the introduction of new taxes.
“Significantly the minister admitted that the greater Accra region contributed 90% to the revenue generation in the country, but what was missing was that the minister did not give us a clear plan on how he was going to make sure that the other 15 regions could contribute their clear quota to the national bucket.
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“And so we are expecting that the minister to tell us the strategies they are going to put in place to make sure that all the regions contribute their quota in terms of revenue,” he remarked.
Dr. Williams added that if the other regions are given attention in terms of revenue mobilization, he believes more revenue will be generated – more than the 7 billion cedis projected to be accrued from the E-Levy.
“The revenue generating activities or revenue coming from the regions are not that encouraging, so if we are able to do that, this will even give us more money than what we are anticipating from the E-Levy which is 7 billion”, he added.
He also wanted the Minister to come clear on government’s expenditure rationalization programme
“Also we noticed that the minister went on the line of expenditure cutting but it was not very clear to us,” he furthered.