Isaac Adongo, the deputy ranking member of Parliament’s Finance Committee, claims the Akufo-Addo government lied when it announced the numerous COVID-19 relief packages, including free water and free energy for Ghanaians in 2020.
According to him, the government’s multiple interventions at the height of the pandemic were the “biggest lie and fraud on the Ghanaian people.”
Mr. Adongo blasted the government for planning to impose new taxes to compensate for COVID-19 expenditures, describing the decision as disrespectful to ordinary citizens.
“…at a time when a lot of people are at home and businesses are struggling to run, where do you think they will get the money? It means that the little that they will get which they could plough back to run their business, you are coming to collect it from them,” he said.
In presenting the 2021 budget last week, the government revealed the government’s plan to introduce six new taxes through caretaker Finance Minister Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu.
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These taxes include a COVID-19 Health Levy, a 1% rise in the National Health Insurance Levy, a 1% increase in the flat VAT rate, a 30 pesewas increase in fuel prices to cover excess power capacity charges [20 pesewas], and a 10% increase in the Sanitation and Pollution Levy.
Some observers and Ghanaians have already voiced their opposition to the plan, claiming that it would only make things worse for them.
However, Information Minister Kojo Oppong Nkrumah clarified that such taxes are appropriate because the government must repay the funds used to provide some relief and help to people at the peak of the pandemic in 2020.
However, the Bolgatanga Central legislator claimed that the government’s planned new taxes prove that the funds raised during the COVID-19 pandemic were mismanaged.
He also accused the government of “populist spending” of the country’s capital.
“The only way to deal with this would have been to use the money that came to the government wisely… You engaged in populist spending of scarce resources, and now you’re asking the people to pay for it. That is insensitive, and it is the biggest deception and fraud on the Ghanaian people because we were led to believe that the economy could support those freebies because it was in the hands of those who knew how to manage the economy, and because they knew how to manage the economy, they had built enough buffers to give us the freebies, and people were excited, and now they tell you we are lying.
According to Isaac Adongo, the government should abandon regressive taxation and instead target the wealthy to collect revenue.
Source: ATLFMNEWSROOM
