By Francis Ntow
Accra, July 24, GNA – Dr Stephen Amoah, a Deputy Finance Minister, says positive improvements in the economy will gradually reflect in better living conditions of Ghanaians, and called for more patience.
He admitted that Ghanaians were right in complaining about growth in macroeconomic performance seldom having immediate positive impact on incomes of workers and people’s lives.
Dr Amoah attributed the situation to the predominantly informal-Small and Medium-sized Enterprise (SME)-led economy, which responded slowly to growth in improved macroeconomic performance, including inflation.
He was speaking at a technical briefing session organised by the Ministry of Finance on Wednesday, July 24, on the back of the presentation of the mid-year budget review to Parliament.
“The government always talks about figures when it comes to improvement in the economy, but Ghanaians say inflation is not in our pockets, and it’s not that you’re lying, it’s true. You don’t feel it readily,” he said.
“The reason normally the economic figures do take a long-time is that our economy is about 90 per cent SME, and when for example, the economy moves forward 10 per cent, it takes a very slow pace to take effect,” he noted.
The Deputy Minister explained that that happened because the Ghanaian market did not respond early to the growth in performance, saying, “development is a process, but we assure you that gradually, we’ll get there.”
He assured of government’s steadfast work to sustain the economic gains made in recent times through the country’s homegrown programme under the ongoing US$3 billion International Monetary Fund (IMF) loan-supported facility.
The government, he said, would provide financial and technical support to targeted businesses under the GHS8.2bn SME Growth and Opportunity initiative to ensure sustained economic growth and jobs for Ghanaians.
“SME GO initiative targets small number of impact-driven SMEs and giving them large sums of money so that they can expand and employ more people. By doing that we’ll inject some amount of sustainability in the job space,” he said.
Regarding tax, he called for a non-partisan approach in ensuring that the country earned the appropriate money to fund its development projects to the benefit of its people.
Dr Amoah was concerned that over the years, the two dominant political parties – the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and National Democratic Congress (NDC)- tended to use tax payments to ‘discourage’ people from paying.
“I’ll admonish that we’re careful with NPP/NDC because depending on which one is in opposition, tax is not good. When NPP is in power tax is not good- NDC incites you, and when NDC is in power, tax is not good – NPP incites you,” he said.
“So, sometimes, we must pull the breaks and find out what happened to us, so that we can all be part of that collectivism that we need to build this country. Without that all these great jobs we’re doing would not yield results,” he stated.
Currently about 7.4 million taxpayers are in the country’s database, nonetheless, 1.9 million are active taxpayers, with some 5.4 million others being inactive, while the remaining one million eligible taxpayers, being dormant.
Referring to the tax revenue data, the Deputy Finance Minister, encouraged Ghanaians to honour their tax obligations to enable the government to meet its targets and spur development in the country.
Ghana’s total revenue and grants for the first half of 2024 amounted to GHS74.7 billion, which was 1.9 per cent below the target of GHS76.1 billion, due to a 72.3 per cent reduction in grants, and 33.7 per cent decline in oil and gas receipts.
GNA