Riyaz Patel
Ghana’s Information Minister say his government plans to raise funds internally to support electoral activities across the country for the west African nation’s general elections in 2020.
Kojo Oppong Nkrumah outlined that the decision is in line with the government’s “Ghana Beyond Aid agenda.”
He was speaking to the media after the Ghanaian Cabinet’s 64th regular meeting.
“In other statutory obligations for the year, particularly on elections, it will be carried out within the national resource envelope. The days that we have to be relying on donor partners to execute some of these critical national obligations are over,” said Nkrumah.
“It falls squarely within our ambits and what that means is that the generation of our internal resources to meet those obligations is key.”
Ghana usually depends on donor partners and central government to fund parliamentary, presidential and local assembly elections.
Some have even called for the Electoral Commission (EC) to introduce special taxes to fund elections in the country.
But the EC Chair, Jean Mensa has said the ordinary Ghanaian is already overburdened and another tax will just increase the burden.
“In Ghana, it is the government of Ghana that funds our election in its totality. So I do not think that the imposition of election tax will be something that the people of Ghana will take lightly because we are already over-taxed. And you know that we do have a lot of resources and with efficient management, we should be able to fund our elections,” she said recently.
