The newly-launched Revenue Assurance and Compliance Enforcement (RACE) initiative is expected to increase Ghana’s revenue mobilisation ratio to 20 per cent of Ghana’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), Information Minister, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah has said.
The Minister in a tweet said the initiative was put in place to help ensure the nation was able to increase its revenue mobilisation ratio to 20 per cent of GDP.
RACE he said would go a long way to help the country improve domestic resource mobilisation to enhance its ability to invest in key sectors of the economy.
Ghana’s tax to GDP has, over the years, performed lower than the current average percentage in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Currently, the country is doing a tax to GDP ratio of 14 per cent, compared to the 19 per cent average in the region.
The Ghana Revenue Authority has set a provisional tax revenue target of 60 billion cedis for 2021, representing a 32.3 per cent increase over the 2020 actual collection of 45 billion cedis.
In the first half of 2021 alone, the Authority witnessed a 212 million cedi shortfall in tax revenue, collecting 25.89 billion cedis as against 26.1 billion cedis targeted for the period.
The Vice President, Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, launched the Revenue Assurance and Compliance Enforcement (RACE) initiative on Wednesday as part of government’s efforts to facilitate effective and efficient mobilisation of taxes.
The remit of RACE is to identify and eliminate revenue leakages in the various sectors of Ghana’s economy.
In order to do achieve the set target for the RACE programme, Dr Bawumia during the launch, announced the setting up of a mobile app to aid in the filing of taxes.
“We have addressed the issue of the narrow tax base by making the Ghana card number the TIN. This has increased the percentage of the adult population with a TIN from four per cent in 2016 to 86 per cent today. The question that we have is how to convert this 86 per cent into actual taxpayers,” he noted.
The Minister further urged citizens to respond to the government’s efforts by being tax compliant.
