Parliament
will today witness fierce debate on the supplementary budget presented to the
House yesterday by the Minister of Finance, Ken Ofori-Atta.
Indication
was given via Order Paper Addendum that the House was supposed to approve the
supplementary budget immediately after the presentation by the minister, but
because of other businesses of the House before the Finance Minister presented
the mid-year review and supplementary budget, time was not on the side of the
Speaker to allow for exhaustive debate on the supplementary budget before its
approval by the House.
Even
though the Minister of Finance announced some relieving policies in the review,
he indicated that the government would increase nominally the communication service
tax and the energy sector levy. As a result of that, the Minority NDC members
are ready to capitalize on those upward
tax reviews to pollute the minds of Ghanaians about how insensitive the ruling
New Patriotic Party (NPP) is.
As
soon as the minister finished with the presentation of the supplementary budget,
the Minority members rushed to the parlour of the chamber where a number of
media houses had mounted their cameras to grant interviews to press men on the
increases in communication service tax and the energy sector levy.
The
NDC MP for Ellembele and former Minister of Energy, Emmanuel Armah Kofi-Buah,
said the NPP government is very insensitive and deceptive, after promising
Ghanaians that when voted into power it would scrap the energy sector levy and
also reduce electricity tariffs.
He
said after the government decided to reduce electricity tariffs, it turned
around to increase the tariffs again and now after promising to scrap the
energy sector levy introduced by the NDC government, it has rather increased it
which will significantly affect petroleum prices.
The
ranking member of Communications Committee and NDC MP for Sagnarigu, A.B.A.
Fuseini, said the announcement of the increase in communications tax would
cripple the telecommunication industry and that if the telecos want to break
even then they would definitely pass on the taxes to the consumers and that
would be disastrous for Ghanaians.
A
member of the Finance Committee and New Patriotic Party (NPP) Member of
Parliament, Daniel Okyem Aboagye, said the increment of the energy sector levy
is necessary to enable the government pay the legacy debt left by the NDC in
the energy sector as a result of mismanagement of the sector.
He
said the government cannot continue to sit down while the energy debt left by
the NDC continues to pile up and has, therefore, been real to raise the energy
sector levy nominally to help pay for the debt.
He said the NPP would not behave like the NDC by telling Ghanaians the truth, adding “we want to be real to Ghanaians and tell the reality of the economy and the need to impose these taxes to clear off some legacy debts left by the NDC administration.”
By Thomas Fosu Jnr
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