Bussiness
IMF deal: What we need now is creditor coordination – Prof. Lord Mensah
Economist, Professor Lord Mensah, says Ghana has underplayed the complexity of its external creditors and how they stand.
According to him, the country has failed to appropriately coordinate its creditors in its pursuit for debt relief, thus causing the bottleneck that has bedeviled the process.
He has urged government to take opportunity of the ongoing IMF discussions in Washington, DC in the USA to get creditors equally up to speed on the Ghana situation and build confidence in the country’s debt restructuring policy.
Speaking on JoyNews’ PM Express Business Edition, he noted that when this is achieved, it would help iron out the obstacles that have impeded Ghana’s IMF executive board approval.
“We have underplayed the complexity of our external creditors and how they stand. We look at the geographic locations of these external creditors, we’re looking at some of the conditions they gave us and how diverse they are – very, very important. What we need now as a country is what we call creditor coordination”.
“Creditor coordination [is] very very important to ensure that information about Ghana, information about negotiations are equal in front of all our creditors – very very important. And I’m anticipating that the spring meeting will provide that platform for which our officers will meet these creditors, one-on-one, meet them together talking about the Paris club, looking at the commercial lenders from the Eurobond market and then also the Chinese bloc,” he said.
Explaining the current situation, he noted that due to the lack of equal and clear information on Ghana’s debt problem for creditors, some amount of uncertainty and suspicion has been created.
This, Prof. Mensah believes can be handled if all creditors are brought to speed on Ghana’s debt restructuring plans.
“So China at one bloc, the Paris club is looking at ‘o fine, if we give Ghana that kind of debt relief, they’ll use the money to pay China.’ And China is also sitting somewhere looking ‘ok fine, if we go in to provide the debt relief, you know, the money will be used to pay these Paris club countries’.
“So effectively, there’s this kind of back and forth as far as the minds of the creditor space is concerned. And that is why I mentioned earlier that we need that kind of creditor coordination to ensure that they all come at the same level when it comes to information about how we want to go about this debt restructuring,” he said.
Source: www.myjoyonline.com
Bussiness
Ghana’s GDP shows economy is fast recovering despite DDEP – Finance Ministry
Ghana’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) indicates a rapid economic recovery despite global challenges and ongoing debt restructuring, according to the Ministry of Finance (MoF).
The Ministry in a statement today indicated that latest data from the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS), cumulative economic growth for the second quarter (Q2) of 2024 reached 6.9%, a notable increase from the 4.7% recorded in the first quarter of 2024.
The MoF statement further noted that, “The economy’s robust recovery is in response to the macroeconomic stability and growth interventions that government is pursuing under our IMF-supported Post Covid-19 Programme for Economic Growth (PC-PEG).”
According to them, the overall real GDP growth for the first half of 2024 rebounded strongly, with year-on-year GDP growth averaging 5.8% for the period, significantly higher than the 2.9% recorded in the same period in 2023.
By Edem Mensah-Tsotorme
Read full statement below
Bussiness
Facebook, Youtube, online trading companies must be taxed – Deputy Finance Minister
The Deputy Finance Minister Dr Alex Ampaabeng, has proposed that online trading companies should be taxed to bolster the economy.
He noted that these companies, both local and international, generate significant revenue from their Ghanaian clients, which underscores the necessity for taxation.
In an interview with Bernard Avle on Channel One TV’s The Point of View, Dr Ampaabeng pointed out various potential revenue sources for Ghana, including online businesses and content creation companies.
He questioned why other national companies operating in Ghana are taxed, but social media platforms like Youtube and Facebook, which run numerous advertisements, are not included in the Ghanaian tax system.
According to him, these social media companies earn profits from the advertisements they display, and online trading companies also generate income from the sale of their products and services.
He mentioned online trading companies such as Jiji, Jumia, and Tonaton, which he believes surpass all physical marketplaces in Ghana in size.
According to him, “I can’t think of a country which has not gotten a digital service tax system of some sort, so Ghana is long overdue. Just to make an example so that people will appreciate where I’m coming from. Go to Youtube and play a video, within one or two minutes, you are going to watch about two, or three adverts.”
“What it tells you is that Facebook or Youtube is making profits right here in Ghana. Go to your Facebook account, and you are going to see a number of adverts on your right, left. What it is telling you is that Facebook is making profits right here in Ghana and not being taxed. Meanwhile, there are companies operating in Ghana, for jurisdiction reasons, of course, that are being taxed,” he said.
The Deputy Minister added that “So then, it comes to the question of the application of our tax laws. Revenues generated in Ghana are subject to taxes. We have Facebook, TikTok and all those players, these are digital platform owners.”
He stressed, “Then we have the digital or market players, here we are talking about individuals who are using the digital platforms. We have Jiji, Jumia, Tonaton, these combined, are bigger than all physical marketplaces in Ghana. And it tells you the volume of transactions, that are going on there.”
He expressed his hope that individuals earning online profits from Ghanaian residents would be taxed.
“There are conversations ongoing, I wouldn’t want to pre-empt anything, maybe in the future, it might not be anytime soon, what I would like to see, is a Ghana where people who are earning all forms of profits in the country are subject to taxes. People who are trading online to Ghanaian residents, people who are generating revenue from Ghana are allowed to pay taxes,” he noted.
Additionally, he proposed a collaboration with the government to curb cybercrime by registering and verifying these online trading companies.
“We can have a system where the government engages these operators, so individuals will submit their Ghana Card and are registered and verified,”he concluded.
Source: Citinewsroom.com
