All multinational companies in Ghana mining natural resources should brace themselves to pay more in taxes IF there is a change in government after the 2016 polls.
This is according to the Convention Peoples Party which says Ghana has been fleeced for too long by multinationals who pay a pittance of what they get as profit.
Flagbearer of the party, Ivor Kobina Greenstreet, when he took his turn on TV3’s political program ‘The Platform’ said “The Convention Peoples’ Party (CPP) intends to renegotiate all agreements concerning our natural resource sector to maximize revenue for Ghana.”
Mr. Greenstreet expressed shock at parliament’s recent decision to review downwards the amount of royalties paid by mining giant Goldfields Ghana.
Mr. Greenstreet said “we are not in favour of the royalty tax system, some people call it the Ghana Hybrid system, contained in the Petroleum Bill currently before parliament with respect to our oil resources.
“We prefer the production sharing formula where we share oil and gas produced in agreed proportions between oil companies and Ghana as opposed to the current system where we rely mainly on collecting taxes… And you know we are not good at collecting taxes and multinationals are very good at dodging taxes.”
According to the CPP flagbearer, Ghana can rake in more revenue for infrastructure development if the CPP’s strategy is implemented instead of borrowing unnecessarily.
He said “if we had pursued this formula, we would have earned over 9 billion US dollars from our oil resources between 2010 and 2015 instead we only earned 3 billion from the current royalty tax system. These kinds of interventions from the CPP would ensure that sufficient funds would be made available for financing development as opposed to loans, loans, loans.”
Mr. Greenstreet added that Ghana has enough potential to generate resources internally and under a CPP government all these policies would be pursued to also create jobs for the youth.
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