Restrain from imposing fuel taxes post 2020 election - COPEC tells government

The Chamber of Petroleum Consumers (COPEC) has urged government to restrain from introducing new taxes on petroleum next year following the general elections.

According to the Executive Secretary of the chamber, Duncan Amoah, any political party that emerges as winner of the polls must also restrain from the increasing taxes.

Amoah explained to Citi Business News, “it is an election year and so government often goes soft on taxes during electioneering periods. If you look at this year, we have rather seen taxes eased downwards. Then it begs the question as to whether government still needs revenue. You and I have seen these games over and over various election periods. Right after the election, the same government comes back to tell you they need revenue, then you find a situation where the lowest of the hanging fruits; petroleum taxes are enforced.”

He continued, “The challenge we have at COPEC is that once you increase taxes on petroleum, you’ve increased baseline on livelihoods. Food cost, transportation, everything goes up when you increase taxes on petroleum. Unfortunately, because that is quite easy to collect, our finance ministers are often in a hurry to slap new and additional taxes on Ghanaians whenever the issue of revenue comes to the table”

“We are hoping that in as much as government would need revenue post-election period, our fuel taxes which is already neck-breaking will not be increased further,” he added.

Meanwhile, in the build to the 2016 Presidential and Parliamentary election, the issue of fuel prices became a national conversation.

The former Finance Minister under the erstwhile, John Mahama administration, Seth Terkper, presented a Special Petroleum Tax (SPT) of 17.5 percent in the 2015 fiscal year before Parliament.

Though the introduction was met with some uproar from citizens and petroleum consumers, the former Finance Minister contended that the tax was required to improve government revenue.

Price of crude oil prices at the period had fallen below US$30 per barrel as against the projected price of government per barrel.