Palestinian cause at heart of 24th ASBU Festival in TunisiaCornerstone revenue regimes must be made more effective – Seth Terkper

Preparations for the 24th edition of the Arab States Broadcasting Union (ASBU)'s Radio and TV Festival took centre stage at a working session which brought together Tuesday Minister of Cultural Affairs Hayet Guettat Guermazi and ASBU Director General Abdelrahim Suleiman. The event, slated to be held next June, is dedicated to the Palestinian cause. A small task force in charge of arts and cultural programming, reads a ministry press release, will be set up. The two officials praised the fruitful cooperation to ensure the successful conduct of this festival and discussed additional areas of cooperation, mainly the media support of events organised by the ministry (the Tunisian Song Festival, the Tunis International Book Fair, Carthage International Festival) in member Arab television and radio stations. The Arab Radio and TV Festival shall be held, under an agreement signed by the ministry and the ASBU in February 2023, for three consecutive years in the host country, namely Tunisia. The Arab Festival is i ntended to promote radio and TV programmes.and display the latest technology innovations in audiovisual production. Source: Agence Tunis Afrique Presse Mr Seth Terkper, a former Finance Minister has advised the government to focus on making the country's four major revenue streams effective to produce the needed revenue for economic development and sustainability. The revenue handles are income tax [personal and corporate], Value Added Tax (VAT), petroleum tax, and import duty. 'As a developing/lower middle-income country, these are the four core taxes, which are the pillars of our revenue regime, and making them work would be to our gain, and help us avoid going back for external support periodically' he said. Mr Terkper said in an interview with the Ghana News Agency on Wednesday, February 28, after he delivered a speech at a public dialogue organised by the PFM Tax Africa Network. The dialogue was on Ghana's ongoing US$3 billion loan-support programme with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). 'If you take the whole of the about 15 levies we have, they're not contributing more than six per cent to Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and are distorting the primary, which hurts businesses, even the more,' he said. He urged the government to scrap of the Electronic Transactions Levy (E-levy), and not introduce the 15 per cent VAT on electricity and emission tax, expressing confidence that doing so would engender compliance in existing tax handles. 'The levies are distortive, and encouraging evasion and avoidance, so let's clear them and focus on the country's pillar tax regimes,' the former Finance Minister said. He expressed concern, saying: 'For example, Integrated Tax Administration System (ITAS) - a digitisation measure that can help us expand the tax base has been there for more than seven years, and we've not been able to introduce a domestic IT system for the Ghana Revenue Authority when the plan and World Bank funding was there.' He also called for pragmatic efforts in having a debt management policy that would discourage the government from borrowing beyond a certain threshold and ensure timely repayment. On the way forward in the implementation of the US$3bn loan-support programme, IMF, he said Ghana must be steadfast in policy and reform implementation. That, the Fund said should include measures that would shore up revenue, and reduce expenditure, to ensure durable restoration of macroeconomic stability and debt sustainability. Source: Ghana News Agency