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A Chartered Economist and Financial Analyst has advised the opposition NPP to be careful with the litany of promises they are making without considering the fact that the country has limited resources. He said he is doubtful of the feasibility of the policy proposals considering the fact that the economy is undergoing some reforms under an IMF program.

Dr John Gatsi told Accra based Republic Newspaper in an interview that a situation where politicians make promises without a cursory appraisal of the resources available for implementing these policies ends up creating problems for the country’

His comments come on the heels of the latest policy proposal by the NPP to build a dam in every village for irrigation purposes. The latest promises being that it will allocate one million dollars to every constituency in the country.  Dr Gatsi said the NPP must very careful with the string of promises they are making to the electorates without doing a thorough analysis of the source of funding for them before going public with them.

The NPP have made a number of controversial policy proposals ahead of the December elections. These include the one factory per district, one dam per village and the latest being one million dollars per constituency. The proposals have caused a considerable amount of public debate with a section of the public casting doubt about their feasibility. Dr Gatsi said he is in good company with those who belong to that school of thought.

“I do not think there’s enough funds to take care of the proposal we are hearing being made by the political parties. We need to bear in mind we are in a deficit consolidation phase of an IMF program which is seeking to streamline the finance of the country for a takeoff in 2017. We also have been talking about huge borrowing which is a reflection of the gap between domestic revenue mobilization and the kind of infrastructure needs of the country that needed investment” he said

He said the NPP must be careful with the promises they are making especially when they have promised to cut taxes down drastically as a key policy proposal as well when they are voted into power.

“At the same time I think the political party that is proposing to give such amount of money to each constituency in the country for investment in infrastructure is the same party that has indicated that one of the keys policies is to reduce taxes drastically, in fact in some cases remove taxes on import of raw materials, some import duties which means technically there will a reduction or shrinking of revenue of the country. It is the same party that says they will build dams in every village and on the other hand they are also saying they will build factories in every district.in the country. When you look at all these things we are going to experiencing a situation where the revenue will not be there but we have created expenditure items for the country which does not match. We have created situation where we all believe that over earmarking government revenues is not the best. The revenue we have is earmarked to GETFUND, NHIS, road fund, etc. so by the time you finish distributing these statutory requirement there is little for the central government to undertake key infrastructure projects in the country. So if you match the proposal to the kind of economy we have and the revenue stream we have then there is a problem that needs to be addressed”.

The New Patriotic Party has chastised government for increasing taxes to the point of burdening businesses and has pledged to reduce and in some cases scrap some taxes should the NPP be voted into office on December 7. In an interview with Accra based Citifm running mate Dr Mahmoud Bawumia said “Nana Addo will reduce corporate taxes for businesses, and also remove what he describes as nuisance taxes, like taxes on solar panel importation, VAT on financial services as well as importation of raw materials.

He added that the NPP has a track record when it comes to reviewing taxes in order to bring some relief to the citizenry;

“We have done it before. Under the Kufuor administration we reduced corporate taxes from 32% to 25%. We are a government that believes in creating an enabling environment for businesses. I can assure you that the NPP government under Nana Addo will be the most business friendly and people friendly government. Off of the top of my head, I think the corporate taxes are too high and will be reduced, as well as the capital gains taxes. Financial services taxes also do not make any sense. Taxes on importation of solar panels into Ghana don’t also make sense especially when we are dealing with an energy crisis. We are going to take away some of these nuisance taxes.”

But the rulinggoverning NDC party has shot it down arguing it will be unwise for any government to implement such a measure, because it will be inimical to the growth of the economy.