Ghana Tourism Authority trains tourism levy team

The Ghana Tourism Authority (GTA) on Thursday held a levy training course for the tourism levy team to enlighten them on the implementation and collection of the tourism levy, in Accra.

The training would also include designated officers, who will be equipped them with the necessary tools to enable them to enforce the collection of the one per cent tourism levy.

Mr Abraham Tetteh, Tourism Fund Administrator, GTA, said the collection of the fund has been in existence for the past 28 months and has generated a little over GH¢ 9 million, with an average monthly collection of about GH¢ 350,000.00.

He said the training has, therefore, become important to equip officers to take regular visits to various establishments to ensure that whatever they have collected is paid into the fund.

Participants include regional managers of the GTA, officers from the regions, working on the levy, and newly recruited staff members from the fund secretariat.

Mr Tetteh noted that at the end of the training, participants would have adequate knowledge on the fund to be able to execute their mandates effectively.

He said the fund has enormous potentials of generating funds to advance the developmental agenda of the tourism industry and this requires a concerted effort to ensure that all establishments identified by the tourism act are registered and certified for the levy collection.

The objective of the Tourism Development fund is to provide funding for tourism and tourism related projects and programmes in Ghana, including marketing and promotion of tourism, capacity building, market research, and development of tourism infrastructure.

It is also expected to help develop and promote other entrepreneurial activities, tourism export trade-oriented activities of institutions and tourism education and training.

The fund comprises of seed capital from government, one per cent tourism levy payable by patrons, donations, grants and money earned by the promotion of any project, but currently the one per cent tourism levy was the main target.

Enterprises certified to collect the tourism levy includes banqueting facilities, conferences, night clubs, theaters and all other tourist attractions, adding that, enterprises can only commence business after registration.

The approved banks for payments of the levy include the Unibank, Universal Merchant Bank and the Ghana Commercial Bank.