Ahead of the 2024 budget presentation on Wednesday, November 15, 2023, the Traders Advocacy Group Ghana has called on the government to scrap unnecessary taxes, such as the COVID-19 levy and the network service charge.
“How can you charge me a network service charge?” asked David Kojo Amoateng, President of the Traders Advocacy Group Ghana. “The network charge is something that has to go.”
Mr. Amoateng also suggested that if the COVID-19 levy is not going to be removed, it should be renamed to address different concerns, such as dialysis, kidney, or cancer.
“We from the trading sector expect that even if the COVID levy will not go, maybe there will even change the name to dialysis, kidney or cancer,” he said on to the media.
Meanwhile, Kenneth Thompson, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Dalex Finance and Leasing Company Limited, has warned of a looming economic downturn in 2024 if the government continues its current pattern of ever-increasing and large expenditure.
“As a country, what we must focus on now is how to protect the poor,” Mr. Thompson said in an interview an interview in Accra. “If you talk about cutting expenditure, there’s a long list of things we can cut, but we need to protect the poor, and we need to focus on health, education, infrastructure, food, and everything else because we are in a very bad place.”
The Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta, has indicated that long-term relief measures for the victims of the Akosombo Dam spillage will be taken into consideration during the formulation of the 2024 budget.
“We have mobilised a few things that we would like to share but I think we are also in the budget season and therefore it will not just be numbers that we are working on but true feelings in the field and therefore the need to look at these social interventions in a real way,” Mr. Ofori-Atta said after touring the affected communities a few days ago. “We will certainly give this an expression immediately and also in the budget.”
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