The Chairman of the Finance Committee of Parliament, Mr. Kwaku Kwarteng has justified plans to impose new taxes on Ghanaians.
Government has been criticised for seeking to introduce new taxes in the country.
The Minority Leader in Parliament, Haruna Iddrisu for instance insisted that Ghanaians will be worse off following the introduction of new taxes.
“There is no hope. Ghanaians must brace themselves up for increased hardship and increased suffering because it means that there will be petrol hikes with ESLA that they [NPP] described a few years ago as a nuisance tax,” he said.
But Mr. Kwarteng in a Citi News interview explained that government is seeking to introduce the taxes to allow it to continue to provide more reliefs to Ghanaians amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.
The government through the 2021 budget has introduced four new levies and increased other existing ones this year pending parliamentary approval.
The new levies include COVID-19 health levy, petroleum levy, sanitation and pollution levy as well as financial sector clean-up levy.
Government is also seeking an upward review of some existing levies.
The Obuasi West MP further clarified that the taxes are only to balance government’s expenditure for the provision of reliefs.
According to him, without that, the micro-economy will be destabilized.
“Government introducing new taxes is sensitive. It would have been an easier option not to impose taxes because it is politically attractive for us (government) to say that we are providing the reliefs in the budget, but we will not impose any taxes. But it will only continue to destabilize the micro-economy in the medium term, and it is the ordinary Ghanaian that will suffer.“
“What we have done is to balance government’s ability to provide more support to Ghanaians but we’ve got to balance it otherwise it will hurt the economy,” the former Deputy Finance Minister said.