Ghana loses more than GHc66 billion every year through various leakages at the ports and other entry points into the country as well as unpaid VAT receipts, among others.
The information is contained in a memo to the Deputy Chief of Staff from the Deputy Commissioner of the Ghana Revenue Authority, Mr. Anthony Doku and Nii Adote Din Barima 1, Chairman of the Special Operations Unit under the Office of the President.
According to the memo, dated April 10, 2015, some of fraudulent activities that take place at the Tema and Takoradi ports as well as the Kotoka airport include the falsification of receipts/documents, shopping for Final Classification and Valuation Reports from the destination Inspection Companies and use of wrong customs procedure codes.
The revenue loss figures were worked out based on post event recoveries from particular ports, interception of trucks by the revenue protection unit, goods removed from bonded warehouses without payment of appropriate duties and taxes and VAT traders who charge and collect VAT but “fail to pay the same to the state,” as well as taxpayers and exporters who are sometimes paid refunds without independent audits or verification.
To put the losses in context, the public wage bill for 2014 was GH10.8 billion, that is one sixth of annual revenue losses to the state. Incidentally according to the International Monetary Fund’s deputy Managing Director, it is size of the country’s public sector wage bill that led to “large fiscal and external imbalances leading to growth slowdown and putting Ghana’s medium term prospects at risk.”
The entire IMF Ghana loan deal is eventually worth $918 million or 3.672 billion cedis but so far the Bank of Ghana has received the first tranche of $119 million, way below GH66 million estimated to leak from revenue sources every year.
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