Communication Director of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) in the Talensi District of the Upper East Region, Mr. Michael Nangena has traced the rapid and extortionate increment of fuel prices in the country to government’s reckless spending.
Speaking to Samuel Mbura on the Daybreak Upper show on A1 Radio on Monday, November 8, Mr. Nangena said the extravagance on the part of government has created a mess in the economy which has left it with no alternative but to resort to slapping the ordinary Ghanaian with taxes on petroleum products in order to generate revenue for development.
He postulated that the unprecedented suffering citizens go through is blamable on the cluelessness of the government in managing the economy. He has thus predicted more difficult times for Ghanaians due to what he described as the imposition of taxes.
“If you look at all these things, the times we are going in are going to be terrible. Some of the safest areas by which they put these taxes is petroleum products. It is a fairly elastic product; so no matter the taxes and the prices there, people will really reduce demand but the reduction will be less than that of the increase in prices. If you look at what is going on now, it is as a result of the fact that this government has been very reckless in terms of their spending and that has really created a lot of problems in the economy. Now they can no longer have access to this kind of concessionary borrowing out there and once they are not able to get the revenue to then meet their targets, what they can simply do is only come in to continue to burden us with taxes and one of the safest areas to go is petrol”.
“What we are saying is that times are going to be tough. Even though there is a bit of stability in the exchange rate we are now in a state where many people will now want dollars to enable them to import goods to be able to sell and that will then put pressure on our currency. Once that happens, it is going to affect petroleum products. So clearly, this government appears to be quite clueless about the whole thing and that is also as a result of what they have done [over spending],” said Mr. Nangena.
He again reiterated the party’s National Communications Officer, Sammy Gyamfi and other party bigwigs’ request for government to scrap taxes they termed as nuisance taxes to ameliorate the suffering of Ghanaians.
Meanwhile, the Upper East Regional Communications Director for the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Mr. Issah Sanusi speaking on the same platform rubbished Mr. Nangena’s assertions. He maintained that the introduction of taxes on petroleum products is influenced by external factors which are beyond the control of government. He said petroleum products were pretty difficult to come by under the tenure of the NDC which led the NPP to seek help from Nigeria some time ago.
He went on to indicate that the government is sensitive to the plight of the citizenry and remains committed to making their lives better.
Meanwhile, a Researcher and Monitoring Officer at the Chamber Of Petroleum Consumers (COPEC), Sampson Addae, in an exclusive interview with A1 Radio today predicted that fuel prices will soar up to GHC7 per litre before 2022.
Source/www.a1radioonline.com/101.1 MHz/Elijah Beyeni Yenibey/Ghana
