Mr. Edward Bawa who is a lawmaker from Bongo and also a member of the Mines and Energy Committee of Parliament asked the government to remove the special petroleum tax.
On a radio program at 3FM, Mr. Bawa told Dzifa Bampoh that the tax was introduced by the Mahama administration and the reasons they used to introduce the tax is no longer relevant therefore it has to be removed.
Mr Bawa who was a consultant at the Energy Ministry under the Mahama administration also said that the tax was introduced at the times when the oil prices on the international market were dropping and this situation really affected the domestic prices as well.
In order to replenish the decrease in revenue, they had to bring up the Special Petroleum Tax. But since the prices have bounced back, he advised that the tax is removed.
“If you take just the taxes and levies that are imposed by the state and therefore they go to the state. The total amount is GHC243million. If you look at Energy Debt Recovery, you look at the road fund and you look at energy recovery levy they all go to the state”. He said.
“If you look at what we called the SP, that is the Special Petroleum Tax, it is as high as 46. Let me tell you the history of this and why it shouldn’t be there”. He further said.
“The Chamber of Petroleum Consumers Ghana (COPEC) has been talking about the removal of that tax. This was a tax that was introduced in 2015. You will recall that in 2015 we had the collapse of oil prices in the international market. It came down up to around 25 dollars per barrel”.
Also he explained,“Within that particular period, Ghana had already put a benchmark in terms of our budget that it was going to be somewhere $50, so to have bought it to $25 meant that were going to have a revenue shortfall. So the Seth Terkper-led Ministry of Finance brought this particular tax to parliament with the fact that it was just supposed to serve for three years, plug the revenue gap that was being created as a result of the collapse of the oil prices”.
“Today as we speak when this government decided to increase its tenure. It was supposed to be 17.5% but they moved it from that and kept it a fixed amount of 46%.
Source: ghgossip.com
