Private Universities Fight KPMG Boss

Private Universities Association of Ghana (PUSAG) has descended heavily on the Head of Tax at KPMG for describing government’s tax relief for private universities as needless.

The Association expressed disappointment in the Head of Tax at KPMG, Emmanuel Asiedu for making such comments.

Mr. Shaibu Dawud, President of the Association in a statement copied to THE PUBLISHER NEWSPAPER said the KPMG boss’s comment is an attack on indigenous private universities doing their best to promote Ghana’s social and economic development in the area of education by providing quality tertiary education for all Ghanaians.

He said currently the public universities in the country are not able to absorb the huge numbers of Senior High School students.

“We also want to ask the KPMG boss whether he has critically analysed where the free SHS students will go in the next three years after their graduation?”, he quizzed.

Mr. Dawud said the KPMG boss seems to suggest that the economic team of the current government led by Alhaj Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia and Mr. Ken Ofori Atta didn’t think through before making such a policy statement in the 2018 Budget christened “Putting Ghana Back To Work”.

He said currently, the private universities are bedevilled with huge charges which includes mentoring and affiliation fees of which these fees are passed on to the poor students who do not get the chance to be admitted into public universities.

Mr. Dawud said apart from the corporate tax being paid by these universities, affiliation, accreditation and programmes accreditation fees are a ‘killer’ to the growth of these universities.

“A careful study in the private tertiary education also shows that most of the students enrol in Private Universities only when they are unable to secure admission in Public Universities across the country, and majority of these students are from poor families where parents and or guidance struggle to pay their fees,” he said.

These he said triggered government’s decision to relief private universities of tax next year.

The Finance Minister, Ken Ofori Atta, in presenting the budget recently announced that privately-owned universities will be granted some tax reliefs to enable them thrive and admit more students.

Source: Emmanuel Yeboah Britwum/ thePublisher