Mr. Wiafe urged Government to use its digitization drive to broaden the tax base
An Economist, Emmanuel Wiafe, has called on the Government of Ghana to take a second look at its tax laws and investment promotion policies to ensure that the country derives maximum benefits from foreign investments.
According to him, some of the tax laws and investment promotion policies placed the county at a disadvantage position, thereby making the country lose a lot of revenue, especially from foreign investments.
Mr Wiafe, a Lecturer at the Takoradi campus of the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA) was speaking in an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA) ahead of the presentation of the 2022 budget.
“The kind of tax incentives and the number of years that these companies spend before they pay tax is something we should look at. We have to take a second look at them. I tell you, the country is losing big time”, he said.
He noted that the loopholes in the country’s tax laws made it possible for multinational companies operating in the country, especially oil companies to repatriate bulk of their profits back to their home countries.
To this end, he suggested for instance that such companies could be given an option to either pay full taxes or be compelled to re-invest some substantial amount of their profit before they could enjoy tax incentives.
Mr Wiafe urged the Government to use its digitization drive to broaden the tax base to capture more people in the informal sector.
He further urged the Government to review taxes on petroleum products downwards or remove some to ease the pressure on the economy for businesses.
He noted that though Ghana’s economy kept growing, the country could not own the growth because major contributors to the growth were foreigners.
The only way to own the growth, he said was for the Government to support small and medium enterprises to a level where they could become multinational companies.
On his expectations, he said the 2022 budget must focus on skills training, entrepreneurship and Technical Vocational Education Training (TVET) as a solution to the unemployment situation in the country.
He said Government must encourage and offer some financial support to people especially graduates of TVET to create a sustainable business and employ more people.