The Vice President of the Republic of Ghana, H.E. Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, is expected to launch the Revenue Assurance and Compliance Enforcement (RACE) initiative on Wednesday, August 25, 2021.
The launch is organized under the auspices of the Vice President and the Ministry of Finance, in collaboration with other ministries. This include the Ministry of Trade, Ministry of Interior, National Security and the Ghana Revenue Authority. It will take place at the Kempinski Hotel in Accra at exactly 2pm GMT.
“This ground-breaking RACE initiative is targeted at effective and efficient mobilization of resources, ensuring high tax compliance and increasing the revenue-to-GDP ratio to support the implementation of the Ghana CARES Obaatan Pa Program”.
Ministry of Finance
Commitment to improve revenues
The RACE is part of several measures that government is rolling out to improve its revenue mobilization in the country. Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta indicated in July that Government is aware of the critical importance of additional revenue to finance its initiatives that underpin the recovery. As such, the Minister reiterated government’s commitment to step up its revenue generation efforts.
“Indeed, we are committed to raising our tax-to-GDP ratio from the current 14 percent to 20 percent as our peers in the sub-region. The Ghana Revenue Authority is therefore implementing a transformation agenda to block the huge leakages in key sectors of the economy”.
Ken Ofori-Atta
This transformation agenda, according to Mr. Ofori-Atta, is not just about mobilizing more revenues but doing so efficiently through technology and integrated data system. The introduction of the RACE is therefore, one of the measures the government is putting in place to seal revenue leakages.
Announced earlier this year, the remit of RACE is to identify and eliminate revenue leakages while reinforcing the culture of compliance nationwide. Mr. Ofori-Atta hinted in July that government will formally launch this Initiative early August, 2021.
Taxing the informal sector
Also, the Deputy Minister for Finance, John Kumah earlier stated that the RACE will ensure that the informal sector is rolled on to the government’s tax net. According to him, government will continue to experience revenue shortfalls if it does not tax the informal sector.
This and other measures form part of ways the government intends to raise its contribution of GH¢30 billion towards implementation of the CARES Program.
Mr. Ofori-Atta further touched on how the private sector will raise its part of the money. According to him, the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre (GIPC) has a crucial role to play in this regard. He pointed out that the government has outlined several measures to enable the GIPC assist in mobilizing the GH¢70 billion in private sector investment under the Ghana CARES.
The minister stated that “we are supporting the GIPC to be aggressive and more targeted in seeking investment into the prioritized sectors”. Still on mobilizing private sector investment, Mr. Ofori-Atta indicated that government is making intentional and dedicated effort to attract global and regional brands. Some of these include Twitter and Google which the government expects to contribute towards the development of domestic businesses.
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