The Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) has exceeded its 42.7 billion Ghana cedis tax revenue target for 2020 by 2.6billion Ghana cedis according to new data released by the Authority.
GRA has collected 45.3 billion Ghana cedis for the year under review as against the target of 42.7 Billion Ghana cedis.
Due to the impact of the coronavirus, there was a revision of the earlier target from 47.25 billion Ghana cedis to 42.7 billion Ghana cedis.
In a press briefing in Accra, Rev. Amishadai Owusu Amoah intimated that the excellent performance of the authority can be attributed to its strategy to focus on certain areas particularly those that were less affected by the pandemic is the financial and telecommunication sectors.
“The authority initially, had a budget from the ministry of finance of 47.25 billion as it was supposed to collect from 2020 fiscal year. However, during the New Year review, as a result of the impact of Covid 19, the target was reviewed downwards to 42.7 and this represented a negative group. Despite the challenges of the covid 19, GRA was able to exceed the revised target. They actually collected, 45.338 billion. This means that we exceed the revised target by 2.6 billion,” he said.
Rev. Owusu Amoah further helped demystified figures for domestic revenue in customs, as he noted grew by a nominal rate of 2.8 Percent whilst customs collection grew by 4.5 percent.
The Authority has set what it describes as an aggressive target of 60 billion Ghana cedis as it revenue target for 2021 despite the obvious impact of COVID 19.
“We are not stopping in 2021. Quite, we are waiting for the Minister of Finance to indicate to us the overall budget we have to collect for 2021. We have set ourselves an aggressive target of 60 billion in 2021. This represents about 32 percent year of year increase if you compare to the 25 billion we collected this year. Definitely, it’s an ambitious budget, but we will have underline strategies that will ensure that we will be able to get to this target,” he explained.
