Koforidua, April 20, GNA - The Internal Revenue Services(IRS) collected 6,444.385 trillion cedis last year to exceed its target of about six trillion cedis by over 500 billion cedis.

The acting Commissioner of the Service, Mr Joseph Odartey Blankson, who announced this at IRS Management Seminar at Koforidua on Thursday, said the Service had set a target of 7.4 trillion cedis to be collected this year. The theme for the three-day seminar was: "Institutional development : A tool for enhanced revenue mobilization He said the Service, which will be 20 years in July, urgently required institutional development, especially, considering government's objective of reducing the nation's over-dependence on donor funds. Mr Blankson mentioned the need for computers to put more tax payers list on its data base to reduce the burden of record keeping, more vehicles to expand its tax base and need for its own office accommodate to reduce the expenditure on 80 rented offices nationwide. While commending the government for committing 8 billion cedis as initial capital investment towards the provision of logistics, he appealed for the extension of the HIPC benefits to the Service towards the provision of more office accommodation.

Mr Blankson noted that while the Service was able to exceed its last year's target, there were still vast opportunities for phenomenal growth in tax collection through enforcing tax policies with maximum efficiency.

According to him, the Service was not competitive on the labour market in line with its Mission Statement due mainly to financial resource constraints leading to high labour turn over, saying the answer lied in the upward review of the retention ration to least 5 per cent and the provision of infrastructure, logistics and motivation of the staff.

He commended the management and staff for the maturity exhibited during the labour dispute earlier in the year and hoped all outstanding issues would be solved expeditiously by the Revenue Agencies Governing Board (RAGB).

The acting chairman of the RAGB, Mr Lionel Van Lare Dosoo, who chaired the ceremony, reminded them of the disinflation process initiated by the government, which had brought the current inflation to 9.9 per cent in February, the reduction of the public debt within sustainable levels, a relatively strong cedi and falling interest rates. He said these had obviously resulted in a paradigm shift anchored on low inflationary expectations, adding that the remarkable performance and the macroeconomic stability called for a new way of doing business by all institutions with efficiency and cost containment. Mr Dosoo who is also a Deputy Governor of the Bank of Ghana, said the situation posed serious challenge to the IRS to improve upon its tax administration strategies in order to move in line with the current paradigm shift, cautioning that, "the cost of lagging behind is unimaginably expensive."

He referred to this year's budget statement which sought to promote the private sector development through tax reductions and gradual rationalization of the tax system and noted that this had implications for revenue mobilization agencies, such IRS, which called for efficiency in tax administration if it was to meet its set targets. Mr Dosoo said in its attempt to achieve institutional development, the IRS must take seriously the complaints and criticisms of the public about its service delivery and unethical activities by some staff which goes to tarnish its image among the tax-paying public. According to him, good corporate image of professionalism and integrity were pre-requisites in enhancing revenue mobilization all over the world and the Service would not be an exception.