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Bawumia repeats signature promise: Tax incentives to businesses

Bawumia has focused his campaign messages in recent days on providing tax incentives to businesses that employ fresh graduates.

Dr. Bawumia

New Patriotic Party (NPP) vice presidential candidate Dr Mahamudu Bawumia repeated a campaign promise at a fundraising event of the party in the USA to provide tax incentives to businesses. He made a similar promise last month at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST).

At KNUST, he told the students Ghana should focus on “providing tax incentives” so as to increase production and create employment.

He again promised in Houston, USA, to give tax incentives to local business in a bid to promote local production in a government he will be the head of economic management team as vice president should his party win the November polls.

In a similar speech to the one he deliver at KNUST, he said Ghana has focused a lot more on revenue generation at the expense of production.

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“We have focused a lot on revenue generation at the expense of production. The focus of government after government has been on taxation and very little on the incentives for production and if you get into that you are really creating an engine for unemployment and I am not surprised that the unemployment issue is not tackled because we have focused a lot on taxation.”

Bawumia told his audience an NPP government will scrap all import duties on raw materials, adding that “it make sense” to do so.

According to him, when businesses produce and employ people, government can then get “income taxes from there then when they make profit, you will get corporate taxes.”

He responded to critics who said his proposals will stifle government of cash to carry out developments, saying the NPP is not afraid it will lose revenue.

“We are not worried that we are going to lose revenue,” he said. “In fact, our estimates suggest that we will encourage more local production and by so doing, we will get more taxes.”

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He also repeated another signature promise of introducing national identity cards “without hesitation.”

“We have been going for eight years now without being able to have a national ID card for example, having passed the National Identification Act in 2008, we have still not been able to issue a national ID card even though we all know why it is very important because even your tax base is very compromised if you are not able to issue the national ID cards.I think that in the very first year, we plan to issue ID cards without any hesitation. “

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