IT’S BETTER TO RAISE REVENUE LOCALLY THAN BORROW ELSEWHERE—–JOHN BOADU JUSTIFIES E-LEVY.
John Boadu, General Secretary for the New Patriotic Party (NPP).
The General Secretary of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), John Boadu has asked Ghanaians to support government’s efforts aimed at raising revenue internally than elsewhere.
This, he noted was a more proactive way of maximising the needed resources for the implementation of development programmes and projects than anything else.
Addressing the media in Kumasi Thursday afternoon, the NPP scribe defended government’s decision to impose a 1.75 % levy on Mobile Money transactions as stated in the recent budget statement by the Finance Minister.
Mr Boadu said only 30-40% people in the country were paying taxes to support government in its development agenda, an issue he found worrying.
DETAILS:
Mr Boadu noted that the taxes being generated were not enough to push government into implementing many projects and programmes it has outlined.
According to him, it was time that revenue generation measures were expanded to rake in more people in to help in the development plans of government.
He noted that the electronic levy was just a smart way of getting more people to pay some direct tax to government so that it could expand programmes it is already engaged in and to also sponsor the job creating agenda for the youth as catalogued in the recent budget statement.
He said the telecommunications companies have been charging revenue on services on their networks even though they do not directly carry out development projects for the country.
SUPPORT :
The NPP Secretary said the e-levy would enable government to fund job creating ventures for the youth as well as provide avenue for the funding of entrepreneurial training and initiatives envisaged to help create over 1 million jobs.
He noted that Ghana was better off finding jobs for its youth than to allow them wallow in the streets jobless.
The budget, he stated as described by the finance minister as “Agyenkwa” was aptly so because it possessed the potential to redistribute wealth to all Ghanaians since jobs will abound after its implementation.
He rallied the public especially the youth not to be swayed by the politics on the budget by the minority group in Parliament, who he noted are only dabbling in naked populism.
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