GRA exceeds half year revenue target by GH¢138.6 m

Oru Leonard 

The Ghana Revenue Authority has disclosed exceeding its 2024 half-year revenue target by GH¢138.6 million.

The authority said it collected GH¢68.49 billion in the period under review against a target of GH¢67.9 billion, representing an increase of 0.2 per cent.

Speaking at a media briefing on the authority‘s mid-year, 2024 performance in Accra, yesterday, the Commissioner-General of GRA, Mrs Julie Essiam attributed the performance of the authority to the commitment of its board, management, staff, stakeholder, taxpayers and partners.

“The 2024 half-year perfor­mance represents a nominal growth of 37.60 per cent over the same period last year,” she stated.

Mrs Essiam said the author­ity was tasked to collect a total of GH¢146 billion for the 2024 fiscal year, which represent a 29.1 per cent increase over the year as compared to the GH¢113 billion collected in the 2023 fiscal year.

Breaking down the monthly revenue collection for the author­ity for the past six months, Mrs Essiam said the authority fell below target by 12.3 per cent in January, 6.3 per cent in February and 12.7 per cent in March, however, they started to rebound from April by exceeding the target by 1.9 per cent and 1.4 per cent in May.

“Specifically, for the month of June, the devoted staff of the GRA outperformed and exceeded the revenue target by an excep­tional 21.2 per cent, a significant increase in a single month. This was achieved against the headwinds of a very difficult first quarter, this is a testament to the commitment, resilience, and overall dedication of our staff,” she said.

The Commissioner-General noted that, in turning the tide of a negative first quarter figures into positive, the leadership team designed a 90-day plan which focused on actualising very specific key revenue measures, focusing on staff welfare, changing the face of the GRA by moving from an enforcement approach to a very more collaborative approach and stakeholder engagement.

“A key component of our 90-day plan on revenue was the rollout of our flagship electronic VAT invoicing system, which was suc­cessfully transitioned into the first phase registration of our top 600 taxpayers, accounting for 80 per cent of VAT contributions, We are thrilled to report that we exceeded the target of 600 and on boarded 614 taxpayers as of June 30, 2024,” she noted.

Mrs Essiam emphasised that, GRA had put in place regular com­pliance and enforcement measures to streamline both customs admin­istration and domestic tax adminis­tration to help in the registration of eligible taxpayers under the upfront payment of VAT initiatives.

That, she said had helped the authority to register a total 176,524 taxpayers as against the target of 144,000 taxpayers and also roping in previously unregistered taxpay­ers.

To transition GRA from an en­forcement-centered approach, the Commissioner-General highlighted that, they would be engaging with religious leaders to incorporate tax payment into their religious studies to raise awareness of civic respon­sibilities of all taxpayers.

“We believe that when we constantly engage taxpayers on issues that bother them, especially regarding rights and obligations, tax processes, tax audits, and ob­jections and tax reliefs, we will win the trust and confidence of our taxpayers,” she noted.

(Ghanaian Times)