GRA Sets GH₵45bn Revenue Target in 2019

By Justice Dzido On Dec 20, 2018

Mr Emmanuel Kofi Nti, the Commissioner General of the Ghana Revenue Authority

The Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) has set a revenue target of GH₵45billion for the new year, 2019, a finance committee report has revealed.

According to the 2019 annual expenditure estimates for the GRA, the total tax revenue projected for the year 2019 is GH₵45billion as against the 2018 revised budget of GH₵38billion.

The 2019 budget statement indicated that domestic revenue is estimated at GH₵57bn, representing an annual growth of 25.5 percent over the projected outturn for 2018.

Of this amount non-oil tax revenue will constitute 74.2 percent, which amounts to GH¢42,874.8m. This estimate reflects the impact of expected improvements in tax compliance and reforms in revenue administration.

Parliament has already approved GH₵1.2billion for implementation of the programmes and activities of the GRA for the 2019 financial year.

The Committee’s report also noted that the GRA intends to continue the pursuit of registration and issuance of Taxpayer Identification Numbers (TINs) to individuals and businesses.

By close of the year 2019, the Authority projects to have registered and issued TINs to three million (3m) taxpayers.

On how they intend to go about it, the GRA officials indicated that they will collaborate with the National Identification Authority (NIA) to make use of the National ID system for taxpayer identification purposes. The Commissioner-General of GRA informed the Committee that GRA has executed an MoU with the NIA to enable persons without TIN to use their National ID numbers as their TIN.

For the period January to September 2018, the GRA collected revenue amounting to an estimated 26 billion cedis as against a target of 28 billion cedis, resulting in a negative deviation of 2.22 billion cedis (-7.9%)

On the expenditure side, the Authority spent an amount of GH¢749.84million, thus showing a positive variance of GH¢9.96million (1.3 %) for the same period.

The report also revealed that the GRA will embark on the construction of a new office complex at Airport in Accra near the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Source: B&FT Online