The Member of Parliament (MP) for Builsa South has accused President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo’s administration of sleeping on the job in relation to blocking revenue loopholes to maximise revenues for national development.

According to him, if the current government had been stringent in blocking the revenue leakages in the country, it wouldn’t be crying for the passage of an e-levy that will generate a paltry GHS9 million annually.

Dr Clement Apaak, who is also a Ranking Member on the Education Select-Committee of Parliament, said this in an interview with Kwame Obeng Sarkodie, host of Accra100.5FM’s morning show Ghana Yensom on Thursday, 20 January 2022.

“As the spokesperson for the Revenue Mobilisation Taskforce under former President John Dramani Mahama, the work we did, in terms of blocking the revenue loopholes, have been left to rot”.

“As a member, I know the kind of work we did with the team in relation to blocking the revenue loopholes and maximising revenue for the state,” he said.

He noted that this government has refused to work with the measures made available by the task force in blocking the revenue loopholes in the country.  

He said, as part of the work of the team, they were able to retrieve an amount of GHS1 billion from tax evaders at all the ports of entry, as well as customs-bonded warehouses across the country.

Dr Apaak explained that the team was able to block many of the revenue loopholes at the ports in areas like under-declaration at the ports, removal of items from customs-bonded warehouses without authority from the Ghana Revenue Authority, re-exportation to neighbouring West African countries among others.

He added that the work of the revenue mobilisation task force has been left to rot, opening a floodgate for tax evaders to have a field day under the current administration.

“What do we see today? People who are sitting on the Council of State are using their position to import goods into the country without paying the needed tax on the goods under the watch of the president,” he alleged.

“Many of these people are chopping the revenues meant for the state,” he added.

“Well-meaning Ghanaians are paying tax and a few people in government are chopping the revenue,” he repeated, adding that the Auditor-General’s report for the year 2020 states that Ghana lost a whopping GHS12 billion through corrupt practices.

Meanwhile, the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) beat its target for the year 2021 by GHS265.39 million.

A total of GHS57.32 billion in revenue was collected by the Authority in 2021 against the GHS57.055 billion target.

This, the GRA said, was a result of the removal of loopholes for tax avoidance by some multinationals in the extractive sector, paying increased attention to sectors of the economy that showed growth and the deployment of digital and specialised monitoring platforms for tax collection purposes.

The total amount collected by the authority last year was about 0.5 per cent or GHS265.39 million in excess of the target for GRA set by the government.

The ratio of tax-to-gross domestic product (GDP), which measures the share of economic output collected in taxes to fund development, rose to 13.4 per cent following recent years of hanging around 12 per cent.