Business News of Tuesday, 5 October 2021
Source: www.ghanaweb.com
2021-10-05
Senior Presidential Advisor, Nana Yaw Osafo-Maafo
• Osafo-Maafo has charged the new Local Government Service Board to generate innovative ideas
• The Senior Presidential Advisor is not happy with the revenue generated by the state from property rates
• He has related the situation in Ghana to other countries such Zambia
Senior Advisor to the President, Nana Yaw Osafo-Maafo has decried the amount of revenue the government of Ghana realizes from property rates.
According to the former Senior Minister, the revenue Ghana generates from property rates accounts for only 0.03% of the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
He believes this does not speak well for the country considering what other West African countries including the Zambia make from property rates.
“In Ghana, we only realise 0.03% of GDP from property rates. To put it better into perspective, The Gambia generates revenue from property rates about 17 times more than what we do in Ghana,” he stated during the swearing-in of the new governing board of the Local Government Service in Accra.
At the back of his statement, the Senior Presidential Advisor urged the newly inaugurated board to come up with innovative ways to increase revenues realized from property rates for the state.
Minister for Lands and Natural Resources, Samuel Abdulai Jinapor recently revealed plans by government to roll out a new property rates policy.
The Minister stated that such a policy required a multi-sectoral effort.
He noted that his Ministry and that of Local Government and Rural Development were on board to ensure the enactment of a legislative instrument that will ensure that land is considered as important in the evaluation of all properties in the country.
The Minister tagged the non-inclusion of land in the valuation of structures as unfair, adding that such a practice cannot be allowed to continue.
“You value the property based on the structure and not the value of the land. So, the value of the land is completely discounted, and it doesn’t get into the valuation, and the government thinks that is very inequitable and very unfair,” the Minister said.