Cape Coast (C/R), March 6, GNA – President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo says only a bold domestic programme, including a dramatic local resource mobilisation will ensure accelerated national development.
He said with the COVID-19 pandemic disrupting global financing mechanisms and opening up a huge funding gap to all countries, Ghanaians must accept that “development can best take place in the considerable increase in revenue mobilisation.”
Speaking at a parade of students, security services and identifiable groups to mark Ghana’s 65th Independence anniversary, at Cape Coast, the Central Regional capital, President Akufo-Addo emphasised that the effects of the pandemic had brought to the fore the pressing need for intense increase in domestic resource mobilisation to reduce dependence on foreign saving.
“Today there is no question that the most important thing on people’s minds is the need for accelerated national development to improve living standards and generate jobs for the mass of the people especially the youth.
“However, not everyone is ready to take the next step to the recognition that accelerated national development can best take place in the considerable increase in revenue mobilisation… And very few will then take the further step to accept that revenue mobilisation will happen principally through taxation,” he said.
Noting that Ghana’s tax to GDP ratio 12.2 percent paled in comparison with peers the world over, the President said it was not acceptable that only 2.4 million of the Ghanaian population carried the entire tax burden of over 30 million others.
He said the Asian countries that were doing well financed their rapid development from their own savings and “we need to do the same and alter our fiscal profile”
“We must move Ghana to a situation beyond aid… that is a Ghana no longer dependent on the benevolence of foreign charity and donors for the management of public financing.
“It is doable, we want to transform Ghana into a world-class economic hub, which will benefit every single Ghanaian,” he stressed.
This year’s celebration is on the new theme: “Working Together, Bouncing Back Together”, which is a clarion call on Ghanaians to put their shoulders to the wheel as the country strive to succeed.
President Akufo-Addo told the gathering that the theme of the celebrations imposed the duty on all Ghanaians to embrace the essence of patriotism.
“We must not run down our nation simply because we can, all to achieve a narrow parochial and partisan interest.
“We are bound to have differences of opinion in the way forward in our nation, but we must recognise that the expression of those diverse views should not undermine the fundamental unity we need to forge to advance the course of our nation,” he said.
GNA