Ghana will continue to battle with revenue mobilisation – Prof. Baah Boateng

Economist, Professor William Baah-Boateng, has lamented that Ghana may struggle with its revenue mobilisation if proper measures are not put in place.

According to him, successive government have failed to address the challenges due to a lack of appropriate strategy,

Professor Baah-Boateng who is also the Head of the Economics Department, University of Ghana, stressed on the need for a more robust system in tackling revenue leakages across all sectors, rather than expanding the net.

“I think we will continue to battle with revenue collection. We keep expanding the tax net, yet we are not getting what we want, which means we are not doing something right”.

“We see government agencies collecting taxes yet we see less of these amounts for developmental projects”, he bemoaned.

Professor Baah-Boateng further asked the government to implement policies based on science and data.

He explained that government should not haste in making decisions due to crises that will crowd out the private sector.

“Policies made should be based on research, science and data. We have a lot of policies that seem to be ineffective”.

Widening the domestic tax base of the economy has been a subject matter that has received hefty attention of successive governments over years in most parts of the world.

As a result, Ghana have created numerous efforts directed at mobilising as much as possible tax revenue to assist government expenditures on developmental, social, recurring and interventional projects over the years.

These efforts of tax mobilisation are dear to governments for the achievements of fiscal consolidation and higher tax revenue to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) ratio.