Parliament approves Coronavirus Health Recovery Levy amid Minority resistance

“The fact that you benefited from the suspension of the Fiscal Responsibility Act does not mean that you should act irresponsibly in terms of not prioritizing government expenditure or controlling government expenditure,” Minority Leader Haruna Iddrisu has repudiated the Akufo-Addo administration.

Despite that, and the equal number of MPs on the Minority side, Parliament passed the COVID-19 Health Recovery Levy during the last sitting of the first meeting of the first session of the 8th Parliament of the Fourth Republic.

This is an introduction of new taxes being imposed on taxpayers to raise revenue for COVID-19-related expenditure.

Haruna Iddrisu (NDC- Tamale South MP), the Minority Leader, stated that his side could not support the new levy because the Ministry of Health failed to justify how the COVID-19 funds were expended at the height of the pandemic.

He further stated that despite the suspension of the Fiscal Responsibility Act, there has been lavish spending under the guise of addressing the novel coronavirus pandemic.

Haruna Iddrisu described the bill as a regressive tax which “will impose further hardship on the Ghanaian”.

He added: “It makes no distinction between the rich and the poor, it is anonymous… to the NPP’s own manifesto promise of moving from taxation to production. That is a somersault of policy when even during the COVID times you’re coming with these new taxes.”

He argued that the bill did not expressly indicate clear-cut modalities in which the about GH¢1.4 billion potential revenue is to be utilized.

Majority Leader Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu explained that the evolving nature of issues surrounding COVID-19 and its unstable expenditure will impede efforts to compartmentalize the uses of the new COVID-19 levy.

For this reason, he backed the motion to pass the COVID-19 Health Recovery Bill 2021.

Subsequently, Speaker Alban Bagbin took the motion through a voice vote - and the ayes had it.