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Ken Ofori Atta justifies changes to the top hierarchy of GRA

By Justice Kofi Bimpeh
Ken Ofori Atta
Ken Ofori Atta
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Finance Minister Ken Ofori Atta has justified changes made by the government to the top hierarchy of the Ghana Revenue Authority, GRA.

The government earlier this month made three new appointments at the top management level of the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA).

The new GRA commissioners are Mr Ammishaddai Owusu-Amoah, Acting Commissioner for Domestic Tax Revenue Division; Colonel Kwadwo Damoah (Rtd), Acting Commissioner, Customs Division and Ms Julie Essiam, Acting Commissioner, Support Services Division.

A statement issued by the Ministry of Finance said the three have been appointed in line with the new changes being made at the Authority aimed at mobilizing revenue.

In line with that, the new appointees are expected to drive a number of critical transformational changes including modernising and digitising tax processes and systems as well as increase the quality of taxpayer services.

Speaking to Joy FM, Ken Ofori Atta said the new commissioners are brought on board to help enforce strict supervision and also champion new attitudinal approach to revenue mobilization.

"The human factor is key that why the change of the three commissioners, we are about twelve and a half percent of revenue to GDP and we should be close to twenty and there is a human factor, a human factor is in there that's why we are digitising and then getting a new attitudinal approach to how to protect the public purse.."

"I think we are now on course, we've watched this thing for 13 months and we've seen how it operates and we have brought in a whole new regime and we are going to test it and push to see how the system responds but my suspicion is that people are ready to do the right thing but they have to get supervision," he added.

The First quarter fiscal data shows that government miss out on its revenue target by almost 2 billion cedis, it was supposed to mobilise twelve billion in domestic tax but got a little over 10 billion cedis.

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