Budget review: There’s room for expenditure cuts, we won’t accept tax increases – Minority

Budget review: There’s room for expenditure cuts, we won’t accept tax increases – Minority

Dr Cassiel Ato Forson, the Minority Leader, has stated that his party will oppose any move by the government to raise taxes during the mid-year budget review.

According to him, the NDC MPs would guarantee that the government cuts its spending rather than further impoverishing Ghanaians.

He argued that there is plenty of space for spending reduction.

“I won’t be surprised if the government introduces new measures because if you read the MEFP, the IMF is asking for additional measures of about 1% of GDP and I don’t know where that is going to come from.”

“If I look carefully, there is a massive room for expenditure cuts, but the government obviously is indiscipline, and they don’t seem to care.”

“They want to live large on the back of the people of Ghana. So they need to cut that kind of expenditure and if I am the one in charge or responsible, I would rather go for a cut in expenditure as against a tax measure or an increase in taxation,” he said in an interview with JoyNews.

Ken Ofori-Atta, the Finance Minister, will give the 2023 mid-year budget review to Parliament on July 25.

This will be his first time doing so since the administration successfully inked an IMF agreement.

Prior to that, industry participants have already requested the government to take advantage of the chance to eliminate several tax breaks.

Among the levies are the sanitary pad tax and others.