<\/p>\n
Customs tax administration expert, Wallace Akundor, has asked government to use \u201chardcore data\u201d to resolve issues that have been raised about the implementation of the benchmark policy.<\/p>\n
He noted that the challenge of implementing the 50 percent discount on 43 selected imported items and its reversal after two years, was because the decision was not backed by the needed data.<\/p>\n
Already, government has met with both the Ghana Union of Traders Association (GUTA) and Association of Ghana Industries (AGI), leading to the suspension of the reversal of the implementation of the policy.<\/p>\n
In an interview with the Ghana News Agency, he said, \u201ctechnically, it\u2019s [the benchmark policy] a wrong instrument to start with, because so far, in all the arguments that we\u2019re making; the government, AGI, and importers, all of them are not based on hardcore data.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt means that you have to make a value judgment between the interest of your local industries and the interest of your importers\u2026 and if you use assumption, you\u2019ll get some right and you will get some wrong,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n
Mr Akundor noted that for government to satisfy the interest of all parties, and generate the needed revenue, it ought to critically analyse data from both sides and come up with short, medium and long term measures that would address all concerns.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe tax policy should satisfy all because all the interest groups are under government. Therefore, the government would need to confront them with the hardcore data\u2026,\u201d he emphasised.<\/p>\n
He recommended that \u201ctax measures should see to it that the statistical department comes up with assimilation and demonstration with both the importers and AGI, how the various tax scenarios will turn up, and allow them to challenge those assimilations…\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNow, Ghana is implementing a regional external tariff. It means that the duty rate that apply in Ghana are common across all the ECOWAS countries. What we should have done, therefore, if we thought that the taxes were so high on are goods, is to go back to ECOWAS to negotiate downward,\u201d he stated.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Government has suspended the implementation of the reversal of the benchmark policy for wider consultations.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Customs tax administration expert, Wallace Akundor, has asked government to use \u201chardcore data\u201d to resolve issues that have been raised about the implementation of the benchmark policy. He noted that the challenge of implementing the 50 percent discount on 43 selected imported items and its reversal after two years, was because the decision was not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":712406,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-745255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/745255","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=745255"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/745255\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=745255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=745255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=745255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}