Benedict Doh
A CIVIL society organisation, Tax Justice Coalition (TJC) – Ghana, has urged Parliament to prioritise working on the Exemptions Bill 2022 and get it passed in order to enable the country make savings and support its growth agenda.
A member of the Steering Committee of TJC, Benedict Doh, said the country was losing tax revenue through exemptions granted to diplomats on a reciprocal basis, free zone developers, subcontractors or businesses that imported items into the free zones or single factory zones.
Speaking to DAILY GUIDE after an engagement with the Parliamentary Press Corps on the bill yesterday, Mr. Doh said, “We [referring to members of TJC] are all for it and we look forward to Parliament working on it and passing it as soon as possible.”
He added that the “bill must certainly be considered quickly by Parliament because it will help make savings for the state,” noting, “If you look at the estimates, for example, between 2012 and 2022, cumulatively, we are talking about in excess of GHȼ14 billion and that is on a higher side.
“The issue will be that we can look at the revenue forgone through tax exemptions which could have been done for the state. It could have built some schools, roads and hospitals; it could have created more infrastructures for our developmental base,” he noted
“We have expectations of some of the few areas to be looked at again. We believe there is the need for the guidelines that the Minister of Finance is expected to develop to be published on the website of the Ministry,” Mr. Doh said.
He commended the government for introducing such a bill, which he stated, has a provision that offers opportunity to other stakeholders to monitor the exemptions.
“Secondly, the bill is great because we think it is embedded with anti-abuse provisions such that it will help solve the challenges that confront this current system. The exemptions regime that we have lacks transparency, accountability and provision for monitoring and evaluation,” he asserted.
“The current bill has provisions that cater for all these gaps, and so it will really be good that it is passed quickly into an Act for the country to begin to benefit from it. It is good to take a preventive approach and the bill in itself, if you look at the various provisions within it, the bill creates that opportunity.”
“It gives clear guidelines as to how exemptions should be granted, who can grant it. The bill gives power to the Minister of Finance to give approvals and takes such requests to cabinet for its consent before is moved to parliament for approval,” he said
BY Ernest Kofi Adu, Parliament House