Thursday, 5th June, 2025
Hon Kennedy Nyarko Osei
Akim Swedru
Mr Speaker, thank you for the opportunity to make this very important Statement on exploring the synergies between technology and digitalisation to enhance revenue mobilisation effectiveness.
Mr Speaker, I rise today to deliver this Statement on exploring the synergies between technology and digitalisation to enhance revenue mobilisation effectiveness as we approach the reading of the Budget for the 2025 fiscal year.
Mr Speaker, economic transformation has been at the core of development planning in Ghana, and revenue mobilisation remains a prerequisite for the effective implementation of government policies, plans, and programs. The above perspective boils down to the ability of Ghana’s tax system to generate the needed resources to fund projects essential for resilient growth trajectories. Indeed, the unreliability of aid flows and the longterm growth implications of concessional loans means that Government of Ghana (GoG) is left with the option of strengthening domestic revenue mobilisation effort.
Mr Speaker, since the mid-1980s, Ghana has reformed its tax institutions to reduce its dependence on aid. Despite these reforms, Ghana’s domestic revenue mobilisation remains low. The Ministry of Finance (MoF) on 10th October, 2024, published an updated Survey of the Ghanaian Tax System produced jointly with The Centre for Tax Analysis in Developing Countries and from the Institute for Fiscal Studies (UK).
Mr Speaker, this Survey, provides information on Ghana's tax system as of January 2024, at 13.8 per cent in 2022, Ghana's tax-to-GDP ratio remains below the Government's target of 18-20 per cent by 2027. Though this ratio is almost 6 per cent higher than in 2000, it continues to fluctuate and has made marginal gains since 2017. In 2018, Ghana was one of the seven countries in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) whose tax to GDP ratio stood below 15 per cent.
Mr Speaker, the finding of the report is a repository of key information for policymakers to set out the key policy initiatives and recommendations towards efforts to enhance tax revenue mobilisation in Ghana by exploring the synergies between technology and digitalisation to maximise revenue, ensure quality and dynamic customer service delivery, and enhance ICT Culture. These measures to be delivered by Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) are necessary to meet the Government's Medium-Term Revenue Strategy (MTRS) objective of an 18-20 per cent revenue-to-GDP ratio by 2027.
Mr Speaker, in the last two decades, the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) has embarked on a new approach focused on the digitalisation of tax transactions. The goal is to cut down on in-person transaction in 105 tax administration, making the process faster and more cost-effective for both taxpayers and tax officials. To achieve this, most domestic taxes are now managed online. In 2019, the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) introduced the Integrated Tax Application and Preparation System (ITAPS) to make this transaction smoother. ITAPS provides an easy-to-use online platform where taxpayers can directly engage with tax officials, simplifying the entire tax process.
Mr Speaker, data from the Ghana Revenue Authority annual reports gives evidence to suggest that the movement of revenue mobilisation activities from manual processes to digital platforms is leading to some gains. The GRAs revenue performance over the last five years has shown steady improvement underscoring the impact of digitalisation on Ghana's Tax Systems and Administration.
Mr Speaker, in 2020, Ghana made a revenue of GH₵45.5 billion, in 2021, Ghana made GH₵57.43 billion, 2022, GH₵75.34 billion, 2023, GH₵113.43 billion and in 2024, Ghana made GH₵153.5 billion, a record-breaking milestone driven by digitalisation. Over the past five years, the GRA’s revenue performance has increased from GH₵45.5 billion in 2020 to GH₵153.5 billion in 2024; a remarkable 237.36 per cent surge. Largely driven by digital transformation. Mr Speaker, it should be noted on record that over 70 per cent of revenue in 2024 came from digital platforms.
Mr Speaker, digitalising Ghana Revenue Authority’s operations surged revenue performance and this should continue with even greater in investments in digital technology to ensure the effectiveness and operation s of the GRA. Digitalisation is the engine of economic growth and the World Economic Forum (WEF) affirmed this in their 2025 report.
Mr Speaker, I will encourage the Minister for Finance and his team to continue efforts to digitalise Domestic Revenue mobilisation for effective implementation of government policies plans and programs.
Mr Speaker, I thank you for the opportunity.
Hon Mohammed Amin Adam
Karaga
Mr Speaker, thank you for the opportunity to contribute to this important Statement made by Mr Kennedy Nyarko Osei, on the role of digitalisation in improving revenue performance. Digitalisation has come to stay; and the contribution of digitalisation towards enhancing revenue performance both in the area of collection and also in the area of compliance, is evident in the numbers that we see in our revenue.
Some of the measures that were implemented to improve revenue collection using digital solutions, for example, include the Ghana.Gov payment platform, the electronic invoicing for Value Added Tax (VAT), what we call the E-VAT platform, and then, we also have the Integrated Customs Management System (ICUMS). These have all contributed to raising the levels of revenue that we have collected. At page 2, paragraph 4 of the Statement, the maker of the Statement made reference to the research done by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), which indicated that as of 2022, a tax to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) ratio was about 13.8 per cent.
Mr Speaker, he also alluded to the fact that this is far below the 18 per cent we are supposed to achieve by 2027. I would like to report that over the last two years, the Government has achieved so much to the extent that we are very close to achieving the 18 per cent before 2027. As at the end of last year, 2024, tax to GDP ratio was 17 per cent. We took it from 13.8 per cent in 2022 to 17 per cent as of December 2024. That is very significant; which is, moving from GH₵75 billion to GH₵154 billion. So, through the effort of the Government, and the measures that we implemented, the digital platforms and the visa solutions, we managed to double the revenue collection from GH₵75 billion to GH₵154 billion, and that brought our tax to GDP ratio to 17 per cent.
I would like to invite the new Minister for Finance to continue to pursue these policies and measures to achieve the tax to GDP ratio of 18 per cent this year, and not 2027, because that is possible; that can be done. If we have done it from 2022 to 2024 by about 3.2 percentage points, then it should be possible for them to achieve it if we have to do one percentage point this year.
Mr Speaker, making tax digital, requires a number of measures. One, is the faceless tax assessment and filing of taxes. Two, is to ensure that businesses and individuals keep digital tax records, and three, is to simplify tax audit in order to improve on the compliance, and this is what the ITAPS, referred to in the Statement is intended to achieve. I again want to encourage the Minister for Finance to give more attention to the implementation of the ITAPS in order for us to achieve this objective, and ensure that we collect more revenue to support the implementation of the budget.
In doing this, I also want to encourage the Government to ensure that we source digital solutions from the local market. There are local FinTech companies that are producing solutions that we can use to achieve our digital objectives. These local FinTech companies have been used over the last three years, and we have been able to implement those solutions they have produced to bring us this far. I want to encourage them to also come out with a local content policy that would guide the utilisation of local FinTech companies, rather than sourcing these solutions from abroad.
Mr Speaker, by now, we all understand the role digitalisation can play in the economic advancement of our country. President Mahama alluded to this at the Africa Prosperity Dialogue when he said that digitalisation is critical for Africa’s economic transformation. This is a vindication of what the venerable Dr Mahamudu Bawumia has been pursuing over the last three or four years to ensure that digitalisation becomes the vehicle for advancement of the Ghanaian economy for the benefit of the people of Ghana.
So, I thank the maker of the Statement for this very important Statement; and I thank you, Mr Speaker, for the opportunity to contribute to this discussion.
Hon Emmanuel Kwaku Boam
Pru-East
I rise to contribute to the Statements made by our Colleague of this venerable House.
Mr Speaker, in fact, when one looks at this particular issue, it is an issue of great concern. First is to tackle how we can use digitalisation in increasing revenue for Government, and even for the state. Whenever we look at some of these things, we talk about Government, but unfortunately, the private sector contributes a lot to these finances and taxes. We got ourselves registered into SIM cards and believed that every business, once registered, has an account that they deal with. The bank account, the telephone number and the business registration, even at a point, the Ghana card was used as a Tax Identification Number (TIN).
This tells us clearly that when the country maps up a strategy, we would be able to use these tools available to us to make sure that whatever a person generates or produces, he or she is able to account for it. Why is Government not realising full potential of our taxes? It is just because there is so much variance between what one earns, what one declares, and what one pays to Government, and using technology, this can easily be bridged.
There is so much responsibility on the Ministry of Communication, Digital Technology and Innovations, to make sure that they bridge that wide gap between what we see, what we do, and what we earn as a state. To talk of cyber security, it is something we all need to pay so much attention to. It is more or less becoming like an organised crime. When we look at the people involved, these are young men who are recruited, and what they do is that most of them have people who go on to their system, clone the data of Hon Members or people, and some engage in direct calling. So, they call to find out exactly what one is doing. There are those who also use one’s identification or details to tell people that they are the real people while one is being impersonated.
Unfortunately, there seem to be no direct guidelines as to how these things should be kept. I was happy when Mr Samuel Nartey George made the point that he was going to lead another regime to ensure that we have some form of legislation on some of these things.
The youth today are using unemployment as an excuse for what they are doing. Unfortunately, they have the audacity to call and ask that should they not do this, what should they do for a living? I had an encounter with one of them and after talking to him on several occasions, he said, if they do not do this, how do they feed themselves and their families? So, we can imagine the level at which our young men are taking this.
It is more of a social security issue, or more of a national security issue; this is something we should look at collectively as a nation.
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