We continue to burden the faithful few with new taxes - Prof Bokpin

The governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) administration in its 2023 budget announced a proposal to "increase the VAT rate by 2.5 percent to directly support our roads and digitalization agenda".

It also announced a reduction of the Electronic Transfer Levy (E-Levy) rate from 1.5% to 1%.

However, Professor Bokpin has said such adjustments in taxes don't impress investors.

"It's not enough," he said.

Speaking to Kwami Sefa Kayi on Peace FM’s morning show ‘Kokrokoo’, he said "if you look at the end game, to the investor, outsiders, they don’t care. What they care about is the ability to pay down on your debt; that’s the bottom line . . . and these taxes won’t suffice. We are of the view that if we could close the inefficiencies in the tax administration, it could generate more revenue rather than introducing new taxes or increasing rate".

According to him, "we need to focus and improve efficiency with greater administrative reforms and collect more revenue . . . (but) we don’t do that and rather burden the faithful few".