Government likely to miss its GH¢57.7 billion revenue target — Kweku Kwarteng

Government is lagging behind its annual revenue target of GH¢57.7 billion cedis, the Finance Ministry has revealed.

The government was unable to meet its target for the first quarter of this year mobilizing a little over GH¢10 billion which is about GH¢2 billion short of its GH¢12 billion target for the first three months of 2019.

There have been calls by financial analysts including the Institute of Fiscal Studies for government to desist from setting unrealistic revenue target.

In an interview with Citi Business News, Deputy Finance Minister, Kwaku Kwarteng revealed revenue mobilization is below target but was hopeful government’s expansionary policies including the introduction of the benchmark value will rake in the needed revenue.

“The Revenue targets we put into the 2019 budget statements were quite ambitious and it is because of the additional measures we rolled out in 2019. We have been looking to get a return on those revenue measures and the broad strategies regarding revenue mobilization.

Now it looks like our targets have not been achieved so far, but that does not surprise us. At the end of the first quarter of 2019, we did deploy the benchmark policy.

That was huge relief at the port and the expectation was that this will lead to the import of those things we need in order to give the kind of energy the economy needs in its expansion,” he stated.