Mid-Year Budget Will Bring More Hardship To Traders – GUTA

The Ghana Union of Traders Association (GUTA) believes that the tax increases in the government’s 2019 mid-year budget review suggest more challenging times lie ahead of Ghanaians.

Speaking in an interview with The New Publisher, the General Secretary of the Greater Accra Regional branch of GUTA, Nana Poku, said the proposed increase in fuel prices and communication service tax are likely to cause a drain on the finances of traders.

”Already, there is high cost of living in the system. The hardship on traders is going to increase. A gallon of petrol for instance is actually going to see almost one cedi increment. That is massive and it is going to affect everything, not just transport; food is going to be affected. Much more hardship is going to come.

”In this day and age when you have hardships, Ghanaians take a lot of comfort in going on social media to shake off stress, that one too is seeing an increase in tax. Why is this government heartless?” he asked.

He also challenged the government to be more ingenious in raising revenue to develop the country instead of relying on borrowing.

Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta announced Monday that the gross public debt stock in nominal terms stood at GH¢204 billion (US$38.7 billion) as at end-June 2019, and opined that it was mainly as a result of frontloading the financing requirements, but Nana Poku disagreed.

According to him, government must demonstrate that it had the capacity to raise the needed capital to finance the investments needed to develop the country.

“It is about time the citizenry “embrace voluntary tax compliance to save our country,” he appealed.

He, however, admitted that paying taxes has never been an easy thing. Using a biblical allegory to make his point, he said even in the days of Jesus Christ, tax payment was a challenge, and at a point he had to address the question of whether it was lawful to pay tax.