Improve tax network to push Ghana beyond aid
Let us cut our expenditure, Oduro Osae
Director-General of the Internal Audit Agency, Dr. Eric Oduro Osae, has stated that Ghana’s signing of an IMF programme at this crucial point will expose Ghana to neo-colonialism, a phenomenon the President has been avoiding.
Dr. Osae said, going to the IMF will mean that the country’s policies and projects will be keenly monitored.
“If you go to IMF, then indirectly they will be monitoring or influencing our social-economic policies. And the social-economic policies of Ghana will then require that you go back to IMF again. If you go to IMF, what it means is that economic neo-colonialism is being re-introduced and that’s the area the President [Akufo-Addo] said we should move away from.”
According to him, a Ghana beyond aid is achievable if Ghana is able to widen its tax net and devise effective revenue mobilization avenues.
“So, I believe in this Ghana beyond aid. The only thing is that we should widen the tax network, improve resource mobilization and [instill] confidence in Ghanaians that when they pay the taxes, we’ll be able to use it for the intended purposes. People pay tithes to churches, they dance and put it in the offering bowl, because they know they’ll be blessed or because they have confidence in the church that when they pay the money, they’ll use it for the intended purposes.
He wants government to reduce its spending and use locally generated funds for its infrastructural developments.
“…We should be able to create that environment, it is not difficult to do it. We have to start from somewhere, let us cut our expenditure, let us make sure that we have it as our agenda; not a political agenda but a national agenda. It should be in the national development plan that we’ll finance our development locally because any amount you collect from IMF comes with conditionalities,” Osae added.
Director-general of the Internal Audit Agency, Dr. Eric Oduro Osae