Stop partisan trivialities against tax exemptions for businesses — Afenyo-Markin

The Majority Leader, Alexander Afenyo-Markin, has called on the political class to stop playing politics with the government’s decision to grant tax exemptions to companies operating under the One-District, One-Factory (1D1F) policy.

He said such exemption would enable Ghanaian companies to become more competitive in the sub-region.

In his closing remarks at the end of the two-day extraordinary sitting of Parliament last Wednesday, the Majority Leader said it was unacceptable that in the name of politics, companies that had huge potential to contribute to Ghana’s economic fortunes would be deprived of critical tax breaks and incentives to spur their growth.

“If we are serious about our country, we will stop these political trivialities and move away from undue partisanship and look at the national interest to grow our businesses,” he said.

Mr Afenyo-Markin said: “Mr Speaker, it is unacceptable that we are destroying businesses and if we think that by destroying them we will come to power to have a fresh start and reset, I am sorry you are destroying your very eggs.”

“I think that we can do better than this as parliamentarians and do better than this as a political class and as people who have been elected to lead our people,” he added.

“Mr Speaker, we should have our disagreements but to destroy the business life of people who have their businesses in our economy and who believe in the policies and say that we are not going to pass exemptions when the committee of Parliament has done its work and has recommended to the plenary, and the plenary says by certain operations of politics, we are not taking them is worrying,” he said.

The House was due to approve a number of tax exemptions for companies operating under the 1D1F programme, but it stopped short of endorsing them due to disagreements.

Unwarranted tax exemptions

The Minority Leader, Dr Cassiel Ato Forson, described the recall of Parliament to consider $360 million tax exemptions for companies and other businesses and loans as unwarranted.

“We strongly believe that these giveaway of tax exemptions should be curtailed as it is unwarranted.”

“Mr Speaker, we believe that at a time that the country is bleeding, Ghana should not be giving such giveaways to crony businesses, but unfortunately persistently this government intends to give away a lot more tax exemptions,” the Minority Leader said.

Exemptions not a giveaway

Responding, Mr Afenyo-Markin said under the 1D1F policy, the government intended to give certain tax exemptions to investors.

As an entrepreneur, a businessman and an industrialist who had served a better part of his life in the private sector, he said he knew that when a government granted tax breaks and incentives, their purpose was to aid economic growth.

That, the Majority Leader added, would ensure that there would be available resources for companies to expand, innovate and employ more people.  

“It is not a giveaway and, therefore, the consistent submissions by Dr Forson to the effect that they (the Minority) are rather protecting the Ghanaian is not true and it is not born out of any fact,” Mr Afenyo-Markin said.  

He averred that what the Minority was doing was to destroy the economy.

Thorough scrutiny 

In the view of the Leader of Government Business, the issues raised by Dr Forson and other Minority members against the decision to grant tax waivers to businesses had all been factored by the government side.

He explained how Dr Forson was constructive on the issues of raw materials and the government took his concerns on board.

“Mr Speaker, we started this 1D1F with raw materials as part of the exemptions through the Minority’s constructive criticism and I would give him (Dr Forson) credit for that.

“I as the Majority Leader led the charge and Patrick Boamah, the chair of the Finance Committee, supported it and at the committee level, the raw materials were taken out of it,” he said.

The Majority Leader spoke on how “again, we scrutinised certain requests and the whole request was reduced more than half”.

He further disclosed how throughout Parliament’s break, both the Majority and the Minority members of the Finance Committee met, worked together and produced a report on tax exemptions.