At the Munich Security Conference, President John Dramani Mahama emphasized the need for a complete overhaul of Ghana’s tax system to boost the country’s revenue generation.

Speaking in an exclusive interview with Bloomberg TV, Mahama discussed his administration’s strategy to reach a target of 24 percent revenue to GDP by 2028.

Mahama pointed out that the previous government’s approach of simply increasing taxes had become counterproductive. “Unfortunately, what the previous government had done was just to slap on more taxes and we had got into a stage where the more taxes that were put on, the less revenue that came in,” he said.

The President noted that the country’s tax system needed rationalization, transparency, and simplicity to encourage better compliance from citizens and businesses.

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“It’s necessary for us to look at the whole tax handles, rationalize them, make them more transparent, easy to understand so that we can have better compliance,” he added.

This approach, he explained, would not only simplify tax payment processes but also ensure that the government meets its revenue targets, fostering long-term economic stability.

In addition to tax reform, Mahama also touched on the issue of Ghana’s debt restructuring. He revealed that this year, the country faces a hefty domestic debt exchange that requires over $15 billion to be repaid.

To address this challenge, his government has reactivated the sinking fund, directing more resources to facilitate these repayments.

“This year, we have to pay more than 15 billion dollars on the domestic debt exchange.

So what we’ve done is to reactivate the sinking fund and put more resources into it to take care of the repayments that have to be made this year,” Mahama explained.

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