Former Director-General of the National Lottery Authority (NLA), Sammi Awuku, has criticised the government’s claim that it has abolished the 10% tax on lottery winnings, arguing that the tax was never implemented in the first place.

In a Facebook post following the 2025 Budget presentation, Mr Awuku pointed out that lottery and betting are distinct sectors, regulated by different bodies—the NLA under the Ministry of Finance and betting under the Gaming Commission, which falls under the Ministry of the Interior.

He expressed concern over what he described as a misleading narrative in the budget statement, questioning how a tax could be abolished when it was never enforced.

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“Let’s be honest: how do you abolish a tax that was never implemented?” he wrote.

Former Finance Minister Mohammed Amin Adam was the first to bring this up after the budget reading.

He told pressmen that "Betting tax that they said they have abolished, we never collected Betting Tax."

"So to come and tell Ghanaians that you have abolished something that you have not implemented, is to deceive the people of Ghana.”

This has been met with backlash from a section of the general public.

On the back of this, former NLA boss Sammi Awuku explained that under the previous NPP administration, the government had extensively engaged with stakeholders, the Finance Ministry, and the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) and ultimately decided not to enforce the tax due to its potential negative impact on the lottery industry.

“It would have been difficult to administer, cripple the lottery sector, unfair to players, and ultimately more harmful than beneficial. That is why the tax was never implemented nor enforced,” he stated.

Mr Awuku accused the current administration of trying to score political points by branding the decision as an “abolition.”

He argued that the NPP government had already made the choice not to burden Ghanaians with the tax long before the current administration took over.

He further supported former Finance Minister Amin Adam’s assertion that the betting tax was never collected, pointing out that the current Finance Minister, Dr. Cassiel Ato Forson, mistakenly referred to the 10% lottery tax as a betting tax.

“So if that’s what the Finance Minister refers to as Betting Tax, then it was never implemented even though it was passed in 2023,” Awuku added.

Mr Awuku concluded by emphasising that Ghanaians deserve honest and transparent governance, urging the government to focus on real economic issues rather than political spin.

“Policies should be about real impact, not just headlines. Let’s focus on the issues that truly affect livelihoods,” he stressed.