Road tolls likely to go up – Abena Osei-Asare

A deputy Minister-designate for Finance, Abena Osei-Asare, has hinted that road tolls are likely to be increased to enable government embark on road infrastructure development.

This comes on the back of the Minority’s threats to shoot down attempts by government to increase road tolls in the country.

“We agree with government that we must get more resources to the road ministry to improve our roads. We’ll support government in that endeavor but we shall not support government to increase road tolls unless government is able to cap road fund, give all that money to the road ministry and then we can discuss the gap that will be left.

Until that time, they cannot get the support from our side of the House to increase road tolls,” minority spokesperson on Roads and Transport Governs Kwame Agbodza told a Press conference recently.

However, the deputy Minister-designate for Finance Speaking at an event organized by the Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs, under the theme “Economic Revitalization Amid COVID-19 Pandemic: The Civil Society Organizations’ Perspective”, said Ghanaians should be prepared to pay more taxes as government seeks to embark on an aggressive domestic revenue mobilization drive to mitigate the negative impact of COVID-19 on the economy.

She emphasized that government seeks to introduce several tax policies between 2021 to 2023 aimed at raising the needed resources to bridge the deficit created by the impact of COVID-19.

Abena Osei-Asare intimated that the government is aggressively working to increase the country’s revenue to GDP from 13% to 20% by 2023 as being done by countries within the sub-region.

she added that the Interior Minister has even been tasked to develop a gaming policy to raise some revenue from the sector.

According to her, the introduction of new taxes in the 2021 budget and Ghana. Government payments platform is expected to improve efficiency and revenue mobilization.