The Parliamentary Minority has refuted claims that it did not fight hard enough to oppose the three new tax bills passed on Friday.
On Monday’s Citi Breakfast Show, Sam Nartey George, Member of Parliament for Ningo-Prampram, suggested that the clerks in Parliament have some questions to answer about how they handled Friday’s head count.
“If we had given in, we would not have gone through the vote, we would not have accounted for our 136, and we would not have challenged what appeared to be a counting error.” We now know that Mohammed Tuferu was not in Parliament at the time of the first count.
“There are two [majority] MPs who also walked in after the clerks had finished taking the vote from the majority side, so clearly, that vote shouldn’t have read 136, 137,” Mr George explained to host Bernard Avle.
“The clerks have a question to answer as to how they managed to get 137,” he added.
Parliament passed the Excise Duty Amendment Bill 2022, the Growth and Sustainability Levy Bill 2022, the Ghana Revenue Authority Bill 2022, and the Income Tax Amendment Bill 2022 on Friday, March 31.
The financial bills seek to raise about 4 billion Ghana Cedis annually as part of domestic revenue mobilisation.
The bills are also crucial to aid the government’s quest to facilitate the Board Approval for the $3 billion International Monetary Fund (IMF) Programme staff-level agreement.
The Minority in Parliament earlier communicated its opposition to the bills, but the bills were passed despite an MP from the majority suffering a near-fatal accident on his way to the House.
