Methodist Bishop urges govt to expand tax net
The Bishop of the Accra Diocese of the Methodist Church Ghana, Rt Rev. Emmanuel Borlabi Bortey, has urged the government to expand the tax net to increase government revenue.
Advertisement
"It is high time we took drastic action to reduce the large informal sector and roped more people into the tax net.
The Ghana Revenue Authority should find a way to register all professionals: lawyers, architects, surveyors, etc., to ensure that they are properly taxed on their incomes," he stated.
He said the GRA, in this digital age, must devise means to achieve this so that the country could get enough revenue to balance the economy.
“We should migrate into a culture where it becomes the norm for every service provider to record his earning on an official GRA receipt book and declare his earning appropriately monthly.
It can be done.
In this way the tax net will be expanded, widened and government enabled to earn much needed income for development,” Rt Rev. Bortey said.
The Bishop, who was speaking at the opening of the 62nd Annual Synod of the Accra Diocese of the Methodist Church Ghana, also urged that the country intensified its effort to process its produce for exports by restructuring the economy from a primary product-oriented market to a processed goods exporting economy.
“Let us intensify our efforts at industrialisation; it is the only way to improve our export earnings and strengthen the value of the cedi, backed by a strong import substitution policy. We are importing too much of almost everything,” he said.
He further called on citizens to support local industries not only to create employment for the youth but also to increase the country’s export drive.
“Too many factories have in the past been allowed to collapse due to several factors.
Let us keep our legs on the accelerator for increased industrialisation of the Ghanaian economy; it is the only way our economy can rebound,” he added.
Synod
The 62nd Synod of the Accra Diocese was on the theme: “Discipleship: Living the transformed life in Jesus Christ towards implementing the agenda for revival, transformation and growth”.
The meeting, which brought together the clergy and members of the church within the Accra Diocese, was held at the Mount Ararat Methodist Church at Bubiashie in Accra.
The four-day meeting held annually is to discuss issues within the diocese and to find solutions to build a better church.
Street hawking
Rt Rev. Bortey also called on the government to ban street hawking and to find appropriate markets for the hawkers.
He said street selling was one of the major causes of filth which made the country look disinclined, and urged the government to put structures in place to deal with the issue.
He called on the government to also ban the use of children with debilitating conditions who beg on the street.
He explained that the phenomenon of children with health conditions begging on the streets was nauseating, and that it was painful to see innocent children with sad conditions being paraded on the streets for money.
Some of the agencies that paraded those children, he said, were even fraudulent.
Skills training
The Accra Diocese Bishop further urged the church to identify the skills of its members and implement skills training programmes that would reduce the incidence of poverty in the church.
This, he said, would also support government’s initiative of training young people and students to have requisite skills that could bring them sustainable jobs through Science, Technology Engineering and Mathematics education.