{"id":674496,"date":"2019-08-07T11:45:13","date_gmt":"2019-08-07T11:45:13","guid":{"rendered":" <br><div>\n\t\t\n<p><em><strong>Dr John Kwakye, IEA<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>THE INSTITUTE of\nEconomic Affairs (IEA) has registered its displeasure at the tax approach\nadopted by the Finance Minister to make up for government\u2019s shortfall in revenue\nfor the se"},"modified":"2019-08-07T11:45:13","modified_gmt":"2019-08-07T11:45:13","slug":"iea-jabs-finance-minister","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2019\/08\/07\/iea-jabs-finance-minister\/","title":{"rendered":"IEA Jabs Finance Minister &#8211;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p><em><strong>Dr John Kwakye, IEA<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>THE INSTITUTE of<br \/>\nEconomic Affairs (IEA) has registered its displeasure at the tax approach<br \/>\nadopted by the Finance Minister to make up for government\u2019s shortfall in revenue<br \/>\nfor the second half of the year.<\/p>\n<p>A senior<br \/>\neconomist with the IEA, Dr John Kwakye, who addressed a press conference in<br \/>\nAccra yesterday, said: \u201cTo us, the minister\u2019s approach was misplaced because<br \/>\nthe tax increases will only worsen the burden of taxpaying households.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>According to him,<br \/>\nsuch undesirable incidence could have been avoided if the minister had been<br \/>\nmore innovative in his attempt to raise revenue.<\/p>\n<p>Dr Kwakye noted<br \/>\nthat the minister should have addressed the nagging issue of tax exemptions<br \/>\nwhose bill, sadly, has been languishing before Parliament.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAlso, we are<br \/>\nexpecting firm action to deal with the several revenue leakages, including<br \/>\ntrade mis-invoicing, transfer pricing, other illicit financial flows, fraud and<br \/>\ncorruption. Further, ongoing initiatives to formalise the economy to widen the tax<br \/>\nnet needed to be reinforced,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Businesses spared<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The IEA said the<br \/>\nsuper profit-making banking, mining and telecommunications companies should<br \/>\nhave been the target of the tax increases and not consumers.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt is clear,<br \/>\nhowever, that our best efforts to raise revenue will still not yield enough to<br \/>\nfund our large expenditure needs. Serious consideration should, therefore, be<br \/>\ngiven to exploiting our vast natural resource wealth in a measured,<br \/>\ntransparent, efficient and corruption-free manner to build an advanced economy<br \/>\nthat will benefit current and future generations,\u201d he stressed. <\/p>\n<p><strong>Expenditure <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The IEA was also<br \/>\nunhappy that expenditure had been totally safeguarded under the budget while<br \/>\nrevenue had been struggling.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen you do not<br \/>\ncollect enough revenue, you should be prepared to reduce expenditure; otherwise<br \/>\nyou end up with a higher deficit and higher borrowing to finance it, which are<br \/>\nundesirable outcomes.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cExpenditure has<br \/>\nbeen buoyed by an expanding public sector and several new policy initiatives<br \/>\ncompounded by crippling energy sector debt payments. It is time to re-examine<br \/>\nsome of government\u2019s policy initiatives such as Free SHS policy to determine<br \/>\nhow cost could be reduced.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>It also added<br \/>\nspecifically that there was room to reduce recurrent expenditure, including<br \/>\nremuneration, travel expenses, entertainment expenses, general administrative<br \/>\nexpenses, etc. and thereby create for more productive capital expenditure,\u201d he<br \/>\nsaid.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Energy sector debt<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>On the energy sector challenges, the IEA called on government to expand power coverage in order to boost demand and revenues. <\/p>\n<p><strong>BY Samuel Boadi<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dr John Kwakye, IEA THE INSTITUTE of Economic Affairs (IEA) has registered its displeasure at the tax approach adopted by the Finance Minister to make up for government\u2019s shortfall in revenue for the second half of the year. A senior economist with the IEA, Dr John Kwakye, who addressed a press conference in Accra yesterday, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":674497,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-674496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.8 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>IEA Jabs Finance Minister - Ghanamma.com<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2019\/08\/07\/iea-jabs-finance-minister\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:title\" content=\"IEA Jabs Finance Minister - Ghanamma.com\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:description\" content=\"Dr John Kwakye, IEA THE INSTITUTE of Economic Affairs (IEA) has registered its displeasure at the tax approach adopted by the Finance Minister to make up for government\u2019s shortfall in revenue for the second half of the year. 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