The minority in parliament has vowed to resist a 2.5 per cent increase in VAT in the 2023 budget expected to be presented before the house tomorrow by Ken Ofori-Atta.

According to the Member of Parliament for Asuogyaman Constituency, Thomas Nyarko Ampem, the introduction of a 2.5 per cent VAT will only worsen the plight Ghanaians are already facing due to the economic crisis in the country.

Speaking in an interview with the media, he said the 2023 budget will not favour Ghanaians as the government plans to remove the exemption for Mobile Money users including merchants.

He said, "the information we are picking up doesn't look good for our dear country, the budget that is due to be read tomorrow promises to be a budget full of taxes. In fact, what we are hearing is that this government intends to increase VAT by 2.5 per cent. They intend to increase income taxes and remove some exemptions on mobile money. So even merchants are going to be subjected to momo taxes. We have known this government to be insensitive, but we never knew that their level of insensitivity will be this high because in this time of serious hardship in this country with inflation so high none of us expected that they will be increasing taxes at this level.

“We will not accept this 2.5 per cent increase in VAT because that will be killing, we won't say no taxes at all because government programmes must run. However, all these taxes when introduced is just going to kill Ghanaians because of the hardship we are already experiencing. So between today and tomorrow, before the government comes with the final budget before the floor, we expect them to factor in these things; expenditure must be cut drastically then we can be amenable to looking at some of the taxes they want to increase and also 2.5 per cent increase in VAT is killing, we cannot accept that and so they must look at these things,” he added.

The Minister of Finance, Ken Ofori-Atta, is expected to present the 2023 Budget Statement and Economic Policy of the government to Parliament on Thursday, November 23, 2022.

NYA/BOG