President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo says Commonwealth nations, particularly the developing ones, are at risk of undermining their own efforts towards accelerated development if they continuously rely on foreign aid.
He said the developing nations are at risk of losing the trust of their people if they fail to mobilize the needed revenue to meet their expectations.
President Akufo-Addo disclosed this in a speech read on his behalf to officially open the 38th Annual Technical Conference of the Commonwealth Association of Tax Administrators (CATA) yesterday in Accra.
The five-day event, hosted by the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA), is being held under the theme: “Leveraging technology to enhance revenue administration.”
“That is why since assuming office in January 2017, I have championed a policy of Ghana beyond aid,” the President said, adding “I believe it is time developing countries relied as much as possible on domestic revenue mobilization to fund their development agenda.”
President Akufo-Addo said that when technology is fully utilized and properly leveraged, it could provide vast opportunities to increase voluntary compliance.
“Technology has developed to the extent that Commonwealth Tax Administrators, especially the developing ones, will be doing themselves a great deal of disservice if they fail to take advantage of the opportunities associated with it.”
“We, as a government, recognize the challenge GRA faces in its attempt to cast the tax net wider to embrace as many operators as possible especially from the informal sector. As part of the solution, the government has already leveraged technology to introduce a digital property addressing system and will soon introduce a national identity card system.”
Minister of Finance Ken Ofori-Atta, who was a guest speaker, pledged the government’s commitment to supporting GRA to achieve the desired outcomes from the many tax reforms initiated.
“A modernized and reformed tax administration will inure to the benefit of our country through efficiency which hopefully will translate into maximizing revenue mobilization.”
Acting Commissioner General of GRA, Kofi Nti said GRA has been embarking on what he called “a series of tax, administrative, structural, and procedural and process reforms aimed at modernizing the Ghanaian tax administration and improving service delivery to taxpayers.”
Sudhamo Lal, Director General of the Mauritius Revenue Authority, who is currently the chairman of CATA, said the new generation of taxpayers no longer considers paper-based channels as the most effective ways of communicating and transacting with tax administrations.
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