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GRA to exceed this year’s target

The Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) is to collect tax revenue of Ghc 55.02 billion, against their set target of Ghc 47 billion, this year.

This is a growth of 25.2 per cent over the previous year’s collection of Ghc 43.9 billion.

According to the Acting Commissioner-General of the Authority, Rev.Ammishaddai Owusu-Amoah,”we believe we can achieve and even exceed the objectives, both transformation and revenue objectives, if we pursue excellence”.

He was addressing the opening of a three -day 2020 Management Retreat of the Authority on the theme, “Roadmap to Excellence”,here on Friday.

It was to offer opportunity to define strategies to enable them to achieve revenue and transformational targets for the year, 2020.

Reverend Owusu-Amoah outlined strategies to help in the attainment of the target for the year, mentioning the Authority would undertake a strong digitization drive as part of the transformation agenda.

“We will automate the payment of Value Added Tax(VAT) to involve linking teller systems of registered businesses to centralized database to ensure that VAT collected is credited to the Authority in time”,he said.

He mentioned the introduction of the payment of vehicle income tax and tax stamp via mobile money,an intensive tax education and massive debt collection exercises, “with defaulting taxpayers being dealt with as the law allows us to do”.

The Acting Commissioner-General said there would also be an introduction of an Informant Award Scheme under which “informants, who provide the Authority with information leading to the recovery of taxes owed by businesses, will be handsomely rewarded based on the amount retrieved”.

To aid in achieving the targets he said GRA would implement a performance-oriented, result driven culture through the use of appropriate performance management system, and urged all the managers to work harder and to supervise their officers to ensure optimum performance.

The Board Chairman of the Authority, Prof.Stephen Adei,who chaired the ceremony, was surprised that Ghanaians were not celebrating the good news that “for the first time in many years, the first month of 2020, the Cedi appreciated against the Dollar by 3.4 per cent”.

“We live in a country whereby good news is no good news, the Cedi has not only stabilized but has been improved, but people do not know that”, he lamented.

He stressed the need for all and sundry to hammer on only positive issues this year, being an election year and advised GRA not to be distracted by negative noises  but to remain  focused to realise their targets.

Mr. Simon Osei-Mensah, Ashanti Regional Minister, said GRA’s strategy to go all digital was very paramount.

He urged the Authority to put measures in place to make it easier for taxpayers to pay taxes, the fact “we should be able to generate our own resources to make the Ghana Beyond Aid agenda a reality and success”.

FROM KINGSLEY E.HOPE, KUMASI

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