The Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta, is set to present the 2022 Mid-Year Budget Review in Parliament later today, 25 July 2022.
The sector minister was scheduled to deliver the address on Wednesday, 13 July, but the date was changed due to negotiations between the government and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
The postponement was to allow the government to possibly make some recommendations to the budget.
Among other things, he is expected to provide information on how revenue and expenditure had performed in the first half of the year and the country’s current budget deficit figures.
The highly expectant address will hopefully, see a revision of some of the macro targets in view of challenges that the country is facing as a result of the global phenomenon — COVID-19 and the Russia-Ukraine conflict, which has driven the prices of crude oil up, with its adverse implications on petroleum products.
With the government officially reaching out to the IMF for support, the minister is also expected to make his first official comments on this decision, after publicly stating that the country would not go to the IMF.
Ahead of that, some stakeholders have been sharing their expectations, including calling for the reduction in the current charge rate of the Electronic Transfer Levy (E-levy) and a review of the tax exemption regime to curtail revenue losses.
Indications are that the government’s latest revenue generation strategy, the electronic transfer levy, is woefully failing to meet government targets.
Though the government has not officially indicated how much the levy has accrued getting into three months of its implementation, suggestions are that the government is raking in only 10 percent of the estimated revenue.
The government is believed to have been targeting revenue of GH¢600 million from the 1.5 percent levy on electronic financial transactions.
“After 5 months of stalemate and bashing, the e-levy, after implementation, is delivering only 10% of estimated revenues; our revenues remain very low as compared to the rest of the world; debt levels dangerously high, cedi, like most currencies, struggling against the US dollar,” Mr. Gabby Otchere-Darko, a leading member of the NPP said in a post on Twitter on Monday, 27 June 2o22.
The government’s revenue target for 2022 from the levy is GH¢4.5 billion.
Meanwhile, others are also calling for a reduction in fuel prices as commuting to various destinations has become a big hurdle.