Former Information has sharply criticized Ghana’s government’s current revenue strategy as a failure.

Oppong Nkrumah recalled that when the Minister announced in the 2025 budget a fiscal programme where he was going to raise revenue of about 102 billion Cedis without introducing new taxes.

The Minister said he was going to increase the tax-to-GDP ratio from 13 to 18 percent without introducing new taxes.
He added that despite the removal of taxes he had promised, the way he was going to close the 6 billion Cedi gap was by reducing the VAT retention threshold from 6 per cent to 4 per cent.

He said, “If you look at the fiscal programme that the Minister for Finance presented to us earlier this year, and you look at the critique that we gave as a side of the House, and then you look at the returns that he has brought to us in the mid-year review, I will commend him for listening.

When the Minister came to the House, he came with a fiscal programme; he said he was going to raise revenue of about 102 billion Cedis without introducing new taxes. Let no soul say he wasn’t here on that day. We all recall when he said he was going to increase the tax-to-GDP ratio from 13 to 18 percent without introducing new taxes. I remember us drawing his attention to the fact that that was not possible. He told us that despite the removal of taxes he was promising, the way he was going to close the 6 billion Cedi gap was was that he was going to reduce VAT retention threshold from 6 per cent to 4 per cent.

“The outturns have come and now you are beginning to realise that the Minister’s revenue strategy, originally as he presented it, has failed. Remember the Minister clawed back about 11billion Cedis swept from 31 December and then introduced 8 new taxes to try to close that gap. Despite the evidence that his strategy has failed, revenue has underformed by 3 billion Cedis.

“But why I commend him is that on the expenditure side, contrary to the programme he brought to us that he was going to spend 128 billion Cedis, because of the critique that it was important to cut 3 per cent of about GDP, he has now gone and has cut, half year he has cut 19 billion Cedis. So I commend him for listening, but I will show him where the problem still is.”