Successive governments will borrow more if domestic resource mobilisation isn’t improved – Oppong Nkrumah

Information Minister, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah has justified the determination of the ruling government to bring more Ghanaians into the tax net to improve revenue mobilisation.

Speaking in an interview with GTV on the Breakfast Show on Wednesday, July 6, 2022, the Minister said it is important to improve domestic revenue mobilisation to ensure successive governments do not continue to borrow in the future.

“When we were hit with Covid-19, Ghana had to resort to a lot of the internal buffers and reserves that we had built to respond.

“When crisis comes, your forest reserves are constrained. Your ability to meet your debt service and other fiscal expenditure obligations are limited.

“If we do not improve on domestic resource mobilization successive governments will do a lot of borrowing,” Kojo Oppong Nkrumah.

Last Friday, the government announced to inform the public that it has contacted the International Monetary Fund to declare its intention to engage the fund for support.

Speaking on the move to the IMF for a bailout, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah said the engagements will start with data sharing.

“The very first part of the discussion is on data sharing. They will need to sit with you and validate all the data that you are putting on the table. It is when the validation is done that we will know the form in which the program will come,” the Information Minister added.

A team from the government is expected to officially commence in-person discussions with officials of the IMF today.