President of the Food and Beverages Association of Ghana (FABAG), John Awuni, has called on government to relook its tax system to give room for businesses to thrive.

He argued that the current taxes, including the Growth and Sustainability Tax, were suffocating businesses.

Speaking on Citi TV’s The Point of View programme on Monday, May 6, 2024, John Awuni noted that the exit of multinational companies from Ghana including Glovo, Dark and Lovely, Nivea, Jumia Foods, Bic Pens was because the environment was no more conducive for their growth and expansion.

He said, “More companies have left the country than has been announced. I have talked with them one-on-one and many of them have opened satellite offices in Cote D’Ivoire and Togo. There are some products which are from Nigeria, Togo, and Cote d’Ivoire, this is real. Clearly, the model the former finance minister Ken Ofori-Atta kept building was not meant for any economy to develop and stand and do well. It was a tax upon tax."

“They [government] need to re-look at the tax system, they need to re-engineer our tax system to give room for the private sector to make savings, expand and create jobs. We’re in an election year, and the model this economy is building on is not a model that will let the private sector develop to create employment or make the economy expand. The government must reduce their tax system,” the FABAG President lamented.

He continued, “Growth and Sustainability Tax, you say that a company that posts account losses for five years or more should pay tax on their losses, where is it done at all? It’s quite annoying, it’s clearly unacceptable. At the end of the day, it’s better for him [company] to exit. We think that the Ghanaian economy will suffer more because many businesses still want to leave [relocate].

John Awuni also expressed concern over the high cost of living in Ghana, emphasizing that life has become unbearable for many Ghanaians.

He noted that the issue of the high cost of living has a negative impact on businesses because they cannot produce more when the level of purchasing is low.

SA/MA

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