Government has stated it will meet its domestic revenue mobilization target by the end of this year.
Although the government initially set a 12 billion cedis target in revenue mobilization for the first quarter of this year, it was able to collect about 10 billion cedis.
But speaking on the Citi Breakfast Show, Deputy Finance Minister, Kwaku Kwarteng said current strategies and reforms being put in place suggest that government will meet its 34 billion cedis target by close of the year.
“From May I am beginning to see a change in the trend. I will only request that we all exercise patience because not only are we monitoring these revenue flows, we still haven’t completed with the reforms in customs, domestic revenue. We have a lot of interventions there. But the major point I’m making is that these strategies are on course and if the trend I am seeing now continues, I am sure we will meet our revenue target by the close of the year.” he said.
He added that “We will do all it takes to turn the problem of revenue mobilization, especially in the last five years where we kept under performing and we never dealt with it, we will deal with those underlying issues and ultimately it will help our desire to measure the taxation and the borrowing. We will get there.”
Meanwhile, Mr. Kwarteng admitted that government has not yet raised enough internal revenue to reduce the country’s dependence on external sources of funding although he assures the country will be dependent soon.
“At this time we have not improve domestic revenue, it means reforming institutions, it means changing the culture within your revenue agencies which we are doing, it means given tax policies to have a tax regime that provides incentives where necessary, penalties where necessary and that seeks to improve ultimately.You have seen the reorganization of value added taxation to make it difficult for those who have been abusing the input output arrangement. We are doing a lot of things and I am confident.” he stated.
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By: Jessica Ayorkor Aryee/citibusinessnews.com/Ghana
