The Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning (MoFEP) has met with private businesspersons to solicit their inputs for the 2013 Budget Statement and Economic Policy, Chief Director of the Ministry, Enoch H. Cobbinah, has disclosed. The engagement was under the aegis of the Tax Policy Unit of the Ministry, and constituted part of its pre-budget consultative meeting with stakeholders.

The private sector, he said, presented proposals on providing a graduating scale in the excise duty rates for the promotion of local raw materials. It would be recalled that government announced in the 2012 budget that it would grant excise duty reduction on a sliding scale to companies using local raw materials as substitutes in the production of excisable goods. The local raw materials incentive is seen as a value chain development in which all the stakeholders stand to benefit.

Mr Cobbinah recalled that last year?s edition of the meeting highlighted several important tax issues, some of which were captured in the 2012 Budget Statement and Economic Policy, and those that did not appear, formed part of the work programme of the Tax Policy Unit and the Ghana Revenue Authority.

Other things being equal, the 2013 Budget Statement and Economic Policy will be presented in Parliament by the Finance Minister next Month.

Dr Edward Siaw Larbi, the Tax Advisor to the MoFEP, explained that there were only 1.5 million people in Ghana who pay tax directly. He admitted the even though the number had gone up compared to previous years, there was still more to be done to generate more revenue for infrastructural development in the country.

Recognising the high of cost capital obtained from the banks, Mr Larbi advised that the stock exchange could be resorted to for equity finance. Equity financing involves the sale of the company?s stock and giving a portion of the ownership of the company to investors in exchange for cash. The proportion of the company that will be sold in an equity financing depends on how much the owner has invested in the company and what that investment is worth at the time of the financing.