Ghana to fix mining tax on global Gold movements
Ghana's mining industry continues as the leading attractor of foreign direct investment in the country and has employed over 21,239 people
Africa's second largest gold producer Ghana said it will set mining taxes according to global gold prices.
Ghana's Ministry of Finance in response to the complaints of mining companies in Ghana over the increase in mining taxes, said it is prepared to reduce taxes on mining if world gold price falls.
The ministry added that if gold prices come down so low that companies don’t make any profit, the tax rate becomes irrelevant. They will pay no tax at all. And in addition we will allow them to carry forward the losses they’ve made against future profit continuously for five years. This is how government responds to the market.
In the 1990s when gold prices fell to about $400 -$500 per ounce, many companies did not pay tax. But now that the prices are more than $1500, and we believe cost of production hasn’t gone up that much that is why we have raised the corporate tax rate and we are trying even going to raise the windfall profit tax, ministry added.
However, some miners are not happy with the surprise announcement of increment in taxes and has called for more dialogue before taxes are increased.
Mining sector is the number one tax payer and highest contributor to the Ghana Revenue Authority’s (GRA) Domestic Collections and has contributed about Ghanian cedi 1.46 billion to the GRA representing 27.04% of Total Direct Taxes in 2012.
The mining sector has also paid 893.77 million Ghanian cedi in corporate tax representing 36.98% of the total company tax collected in 2012.
Analysts said Ghana's mining industry continues as the leading attractor of foreign direct investment (FDI) in the country and has employed over 21,239 people directly of which 334 representing 2% are expatriates.
Sumber : Google
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