The Finance Ministry has admitted that if the country’s income base is not strengthened, it may struggle to pay public sector employees’ wages in the long term.
The Speaker of Parliament, Alban Bagbin, said last week that the government may be unable to pay employees for the next three months.
However, on Joy FM’s Top Story on Friday, Deputy Finance Minister John Kumah said that there was no immediate danger to salaries.
However, he added that if nothing is done to enhance income-generating methods, such as the approval of the E-levy, compensation of public sector personnel may become an issue.
“Well, that will be inevitable if we don’t raise enough revenue,” Dr. John Kumah responded to Evans Mensah’s question as to whether or not the non-passage of E-levy and the prevailing global economic challenges could affect the payment of public workers in the long term.
According to the Deputy Minister, “If you don’t raise enough revenue in your economy, it means you have to go out there to borrow. And if you are borrowing, that means you are not taxing enough and you look to external sources to be able to meet your expenditure levels.”
In light of this, Dr. Kumah asked everyone to unite behind the government in order to promote income production in order to complete government activities.
“So I totally agree with the Speaker, it is about time we looked at the issue beyond partisanship. If we don’t put our house together, we could face such a situation in the long term.
“Let’s look at how we can look internally to ramp up our revenue and position Ghana in a way that our workers can rest assured that at the end of the month, critical payments can be made.”
Dr. Kumah, on the other hand, was unable to indicate when the administration expects to send the E-levy Bill to Parliament for consideration.
“It will be as soon as possible. This issue of consultation, one, many Ghanaians didn’t understand what the E-levy was about. The whole global economy is changing because of Covid-19. There is much more economic activity electronically than the face-to-face transaction that we know.
“And so it is important to explain to Ghanaians the new tax handle that reflects modern trends in the economy. So as I speak, we don’t have a specific timeline,” he stated.
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SOURCE: myjoyonline
