Santa Claus Ghana Has Too Many Tax Exemptions – World Bank Country Director

World Bank Country Director, Pierre Frank Laporte, has said Ghana gives away too many tax exemptions.

These tax freebies, he says are contributing immensely to the negative impact on the country’s revenue which forces it to borrow endlessly.

Consequently, he told Accra-based Joy News PM Express show that the “Father Christmas” attitude of the many tax exemptions which are meant to attract foreign investors have failed in their cost-benefit.

“So, you talked about efficiency, that’s one thing, to make sure that everybody pays what they should be paying. That for instance if you look at exemptions in Ghana it’s a big problem. There are too many exemptions,” the World Bank boss stated.

“And this is a conversation we’re having with the Ministry of Finance. Very often countries think you can give so many incentives, so many concessions, and exemptions to attract investors. But there are other ways that this can be done.”

According to him, empirical evidence has shown that these incentives excessively, in the long run, don’t work.

Many of the Akufo-Addo government’s tax exemptions are to regime friends and cronies. Recently, La Bianca, a frozen foods company owned by a member of the Council of State and financier of the president’s election campaigns was in the news over the Ghana Revenue Authority’s raft of exemptions for it.

Meanwhile, the World Bank boss has urged the government to also adopt property taxes to shore up its revenue base.

“There are other taxes, recently we launched the Country Economic Memorandum for Ghana, and for instance, property taxes is one area where many places in the world are doing it. It’s a norm, it’s a standard in developing world, developing economies and why can’t Ghana do it?