As part of efforts to boost the country’s tax revenue, the Finance Ministry has established the Revenue Assurance and Compliance Enforcement (RACE).

The remit of RACE is to identify and eliminate revenue leakages in areas such as petroleum bunkering, gold and minerals export, port operations, transit goods, warehousing, border controls and free zones operations, to name but a few.

Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta presenting the Mid-Year Review of the Budget Statement and Economic Policy, said “our focus on taxes is to collect what is due the Republic [Ghana]. To this end, we are building a robust framework to expand Domestic Revenue Mobilisation to focus on compliance and enforcement nationwide.”

According to provisional fiscal data for January to June 2021, Total Revenue and Grants amounted to ¢28.3billion, equivalent to 6.5% of Gross Domestic Product, against a programmed target of ¢32.4 billion or 7.5% of GDP.

For the same period, Total Expenditure, including the clearance of arrears, amounted to ¢50.6billion, equivalent to 11.7% of GDP, against a programmed target of ¢55.1 billion or 12.7 percent of GDP.