Government has emphasized that the tax measures it intends to introduce in the midyear budget is crucial to improving revenue generation for the next half of 2018. According to the Ministry of Finance, the measures are needed to maintain fiscal stability to enable government to meet its expenditure projections for the rest of the year. Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta will later this month present a midyear budget to parliament to introduce new policy measures. Speaking to Citi Business News ahead of the budget presentation, Deputy Minister in Charge of Revenue at the Ministry of Finance, Kweku Kwarteng hinted that the tax measures will ultimately boost private sector growth. He explained that the tax measures will not burden the private sector but will help create fiscal space for government over a long period of time. “In the midyear budget review through parliament, we intend to introduce some tax measures, but those tax measures are not measures driven by a deviation from our core economic management strategy namely to move away from taxation to production,” he stressed. Mr. Kwarteng maintained that government is focused on moving away from a taxation economy to a production economy hence will only introduce tax measures that will ultimately stimulate growth and not burden the private sector. “In view of the need to create a stable macro economy and if you want your private sector to do well and to expand the economy, then you need to create a stable macro economy. To do that, anything that would seek to bridge the [fiscal]gap that we are seeing in the budget will be helpful in the long term”. Source: citinewsroom.com

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