The government is setting up the already financially constrained people in the country for failure, further deepening the economic woes while the government continues to spend profligately. This is according to Development Economist, Dr. Michael Adongo.
He explained that the government has refused, times without number, to cut down on some expenditures many would consider as obscene and irrelevant. Meanwhile, the government, even before making a shocking u-turn to the IMF has been surreptitiously looking for ways to downsize or reduce the depth of some of the social intervention programmes it is running; citing the Free SHS and saying “this along with many other programmes, government’s appetite to defend them is not there.”
Dr. Adongo made these statements when he spoke on A1 Radio today.
While hoping that there may or rather should have been room for the reduction of taxes, Dr. Adongo explained that “as you can see, there is very little room for tax adjustments either than some innovative ways to avoid taxes.”
He explained that a re-introduction of road tolls would be disadvantageous and unfair to Ghanaians because government’s position was to scrap the tolls to make way for the E-levy.
Meanwhile, the Monitoring and Evaluation Officer at the Chamber of Petroleum Consumers (COPEC) has called on the Minister for Finance, Ken Ofori Atta to take the opportunity the mid-year budget review presents to remove some of the taxes on the petroleum price buildup.
Also, ahead of the Mid-year Budget review to be read in Parliament today by the Minister for Finance, Ken Ofori Atta, the Executive Secretary for the Importers and Exporters Ghana (IEAG) is wondering what has become of the government’s manifesto promise to redefine Ghana’s economy and move it from one that taxation based to a highly industrialized on that is production based.
Development Economist, Dr. Michael Adongo has also called on the Finance Minister to be honest in his delivery to Ghanaians at the mid-year budget review that is expected to happen in Parliament later today, Monday, July 25, 2022.
Source: A1radioonline.com|101.1MHz|Mark Kwasi Ahumah Smith|Ghana
