The Importers and Exporters Association of Ghana is opposing the announcement of a 0.02% tax on imports.
President Akufo-Addo said the deduction will be on imports from outside African Union (AU) member countries and will go into supporting the activities of the bloc. The new tax which has received parliamentary approval, will also help in reducing the dependence of AU countries on foreign aid. It is coming barely three months after the scrapping of taxes on some products and services, including the 1 percent special levy on imports.
Executive Secretary of the Association, Samson Asaki Awingobit described the move as “a stab in the back”. According to him, the new tax suggests that government is only devising means of bringing back some of the tax reliefs it had implemented this year.
“What is the essence? If government gives tax relief in the morning, ie the 1 percent special levy and in the evening government comes to say I’m taking 0.02 percent. Is it the new strategy of taking the imports and think that you’re reducing tax on them or giving them tax holidays?” he asked.
Mr. Awingobit said the caveat that the deduction would only affect imports from countries outside the AU does not bring any relief to importers as many of them do not secure their goods from African countries. He is warning that this tax would not only affect the importers but the ordinary consumer as well since the cost will be passed on to them.
“If you take the statistics of Ghanaian importers, you’ll see that majority of them; 90 or 99 percent of them are importing from outside AU countries. And so everybody is going to be affected”, he warned.
For him, government must rather look to other sectors of the economy like the telecoms, financial and oil and gas industries, for the revenue it needs to support the AU.
“We have commercial banks which are owned by foreign companies. They make huge turnovers every year. Why can’t we go there and pick money from them? We have telecommunication companies that make huge turnovers every year. Why can’t we pick something from them to support AU activities? I think that the government can go somewhere else to look for this money and not to come to importers”, he said.
The recent tax reliefs announced by government in the 2017 budget are expected to cost at least 1 billion cedis.
