Eighty-eight percent of business leaders surveyed by accounting and auditing firm, KPMG, have revealed that the government takes too many taxes and yet there is little to show for these taxes.

Again, 51.4% of the respondents want that the Electronic Transaction Levy (e-levy) reviewed.

Furthermore, petroleum and import duties/levies were singled out as taxes that needed to be reconsidered in order to reduce the rising cost of doing business.

They also urged government to reduce the number of ministers, scrap ex-gratia and make it a one-time payment when leaving office and not pay ex-gratia after every four years, whilst import duties should be quoted in cedis, and not dollars.

They also appealed to the government to stop the extension of the 5% National Fiscal Stabilisation levy.

Approximately 80% of industry leaders believe that the government has done a poor job of improving MSMEs’ access to financial services, such as low-cost financing, and integration into value chains and market.

For policy initiatives that met expectations, Planting for Food and Jobs was the programme that did not meet the expectations of business leaders. A whopping 85.7% said the programme has failed.

However, Free Senior High School recorded the highest number of expectations, as 25.7% of business leaders expressed satisfaction.

It was followed by One District One Factory, with 15.7% of respondents expressing satisfaction.

Overall, respondents are of the view that all government flagship programmes or initiatives have largely
not met their expectations.

Also, revenue measures outlined by respondents in the 2023 Budget includes 5% windfall profit tax on financial institutions, reducing electronic – levy charges to 0.5%and increasing the minimum threshold to
¢1000.

Others are re-introducing of the road toll, using data submitted on monthly withholding VAT returns to enforce compliance, leverage technology to rope informal sector into the tax net, among others.