ACCOUNTANTS, AUDITORS OF MDAS ATTEND SEMINAR (PAGE 35, AUGUST 25, 2010)

THE Brong Ahafo Regional office of the Value Added Tax (VAT) Service has organised a seminar for accountants, auditors and purchasing officers of Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) in the region, with a call on them to always demand VAT/National Health Insurance Levy (NHIL) invoices for goods and services they buy.
   The participants were also urged to purchase their goods and get their services from only VAT registered persons and businesses, since that was one of the best ways they could assist the VAT service in ensuring compliance with the VAT Act and to generate revenue for the country.
   The Regional Head of the VAT service, Mrs Joyce Evelyn Mensah-Boakye, who made the appeal, said, ‘‘We need the collaboration and support from the general public, particularly you the accountants, auditors and purchasing officers of your respective MDAs.”
   The seminar was organised in recognition of the important role the MDAs had played and continued to play in assisting the service to mobilise revenue for the development of the country.
  Mrs Mensah-Boakye said the participants had in their possession copies of both the Financial Administration Act 2003 (Act 654) and the VAT Act 1998 (Act 546) as amended, to guide them in the performance of their duties.
  Those laws, she said, enjoined them to use appropriate channels in procuring goods and services for use by their respective MDAs.
‘‘Being the driving force of government machinery, the service deems it fit to let you know how important you are to us in our revenue mobilisation efforts, hence this seminar,’’ Mrs Mensah-Boakye said.
 She stated that the success of every government depended on the number of development programmes and projects that could be carried out for its people.
However, Mrs Mensah-Boakye observed that, “We are unable to generate enough revenue to fund these programmes and, therefore, largely depend on external support which has been dwindling over the years. This leaves us with no alternatives than to look internally generated funds’’.
  She said the VAT Service or the revenue agencies could not do that alone and therefore needed the collaboration and support from the general public, especially the professionals.
  The Brong Ahafo Regional Minister, Mr Kwadwo Nyamekye-Marfo, in a speech read for him, stated that developed countries had thrived on effective and efficient revenue and tax mobilisation for enhanced social and physical infrastructure needed to build sustainable societies for their citizens.
   He said Ghana as a country derived about 30 per cent of its annual budget from its development partners, which definitely was nothing to write home about, adding that over the years, the thresholds of the national budget continued to increase but that had not seen a corresponding rise in locally generated revenue.
   Mr Nyamekye-Marfo stated that in the attempt to solve that problem, strategies had been churned out to address the deficits of the annual budgets but that had not yielded the needed results and impact.