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 Mr Vish Ashiagbor
Mr Vish Ashiagbor

PwC holds post-budget forum tomorrow

Pricewaterhousecoopers (PwC) will hold a forum on the 2018 Budget and Economic Policy of government at the Movenpick Ambassador Hotel in Accra tomorrow.

The forum, which is on the theme: ‘Putting Ghana back to work,’ will bring together policy makers, clients and stakeholders of PwC to understand issues highlighted in the budget.

The Senior Country Partner at PwC Ghana, Mr Vish Ashiagbor, said discussions would border on highlights of economic growth indicators for next year, policy highlights and key sectors of growth.

“For us at PwC, this is something we do every year. We try to help our clients understand what is happening from a budget point of view and how it is likely to impact their business.

“Typically, it is about tax policy but over time, it has been expanded to include the general business environment and economic policy, both in terms of what opportunity it presents businesses, as well as some of the new measures and compliance measures they need to be aware of going forward,” he said.

The company, he said, would try to summarise the budget into an abridged document with focus on the key points so that clients and other interested parties can quickly go through and identify the areas of interest and find information they need to find.

“We are just about finishing our publication for this year. We will follow that up with a short forum where we will have our clients and other stakeholders to just come and listen to the key points,” he said.

Informative session

The forum will have the Minister of Finance, Mr Ken Ofori-Atta, giving some remarks as well as receiving comments and questions from the participants.

Other panellists include a Partner of PwC, Ms Ayesha Bedwei, a lecturer from the University of Ghana, Dr Eric Osei-Assibey, and the Agric Committee Chair of Association of Ghana Industries, Fatima Alimohammed.

Mr Ashiagbor said the previous sessions had been very informative for both clients and stakeholders, as well as for policy makers.

“At the end of the day, the clients we seek to educate are actually driving the economy and they are the ones that can give real-life implications about some of these policies and measures we hear being read in the budget,” he said.

He said there would be discussions on how policies would affect all businesses, such as projections of inflation rate, projection of economic growth and sectors that would drive growth, as these apply broadly to all businesses.

“What the forum will do is to broadly give all of us an opportunity to ask questions about their specific areas of interest, whether it is their sector or any particular policy they want clarified or their implementation challenges,” he said.

Feedback

The forum will also provide the platform for the business community to give direct feedback to the government.

“Our clients and stakeholders can ask questions and also give suggestions to the minister and other policy makers so they get direct feedback from the business community. We will have a panel comprising officials from the Ministry and representatives from industry, and our partners will also speak on tax issues,” he said.

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