The Director in-charge of fundraising for the New Patriotic Party (NPP) 2016 presidential campaign, Ken Ofori-Atta, has backed the party’s proposal to cut down taxes on businesses when voted into power.
The investment banker and co-founder of Databank, believes government’s decision to impose harsh taxes on a few Ghanaians is only a lazy approach to revenue generation.
Speaking on the Point Blank segment of Eyewitness News, Mr. Ofori-Atta, an economist, indicated that offering Ghanaians some tax reliefs will promote economic freedom and also help them redirect their financial returns into other aspects of the economy.
“We believe in economic freedom and economic freedom in the sense means take government off our backs in an excessive way. The question for us is taxes can motivate or demotivate; and what then is the critical number which enables more people to fall into the net as opposed to more people being criminalized because they feel it is too punitive and they are disinterested in that.”
Asked whether the NPP can effectively implement this strategy, Mr. Ofori Atta responded in the affirmative, saying “I think we did it in the Kufuor regime when we brought down taxes from 35 to 25, and at the end of the day, revenues were about a 1,000 times what they were..”
The NPP has on several campaign platforms promised to reduce or scrap some taxes when it wins the election.
NPP to scrap taxes on private universities – Bawumia
The 2016 Vice Presidential Candidate of the opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP), Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, has assured Ghanaians that a future NPP government will eliminate all taxes levied on private universities.
According to him, tertiary education has become expensive and inaccessible due to the current taxes imposed on private universities in the country.
Dr. Bawumia, who was speaking at an SRC forum at the Methodist University in Accra, maintained that private universities are suffocating under high taxes imposed on them by government.
NPP to set up Industrial Development Fund
The party has rather announced the setting up of an Industrial Development Fund, to support critical private sector industrial initiatives, as one of the means to tackling the rising unemployment levels.
Former Trade and Industry Minister, Alan Kwadwo Kyeremanten, who made this known at the party’s manifesto launch at the Accra International Trade Fair Centre in Accra, said, “the NPP will pursue aggressive industrialization based on value addition; provide tax and related incentives for manufacturing businesses; investing in skills training and apprenticeship, as well as providing resources for small businesses and start-ups to emerge and flourish.”
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