GHEITI Launches 2012/2013 Mining, Oil and Gas Reports |
The Finance Minister, Mr Seth Terkper, has expressed concern about the lack of capacity of the revenue collecting agencies to monitor tax players in the extractive industry appropriately. At the launch of the Ghana Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative reports (GHEITI) on the mining, oil and gas sector for 2012 and 2013 in Accra, Mr Terkper said, "Transfer pricing in the extractive sector is one major challenge that revenue institutions must overcome because of its negative effect on revenue collection." "The issue of transfer pricing is sophisticated and complex in nature and it has the potential of seriously eroding the tax base. Most extractive companies operate internationally and have extended dealings with affiliated companies, which increases opportunities for transfer pricing and potentially lowers the tax liability," he said. That, He said the complicated the task of tax administrators and created a challenge that required specific skills. He said the tax administrators, therefore, "need better training on how to recognise the transfer pricing opportunities in mining operations and stronger capacity to detect and respond to this problem." GHEITI report The Chief Director at the Ministry of Finance, Major M.S.Tara (rtd), said the EITI was making a number of direct and indirect contributions to good governance Findings on petroleum In 2012, there was a net discrepancy of GHS 3.16 million, whereas in 2013 the net discrepancy was GHS3.10 million. The unresolved discrepancies are 0.28 per cent and 0.7 per cent of total receipts by government agencies in 2012 and 2013 respectively. Corporate tax has also exceeded mineral royalty for three consecutive years and this may require further investigation and actions to ensure the sustainability of mining revenues. The National Coordinator of the GHEITI, Mr Franklin Ashiadey, said the next challenge was to facilitate public engagements around those reports and that the GHEITI was poised to do so in the coming months. |