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The meeting sought to provide an avenue for sharing and discussing some of the domestic resource mobilization constraints and opportunities in Ghana; the threats of privatization to quality public service delivery and how much the country loses to tax incentives and other waivers to multinational companies. This exercise sought to help the country raise more tax revenue to fulfill the government's agenda of a “Ghana Beyond Aid.”
Through the processes of stakeholder analysis and power mapping, participants identified their key and most powerful stakeholders in order to develop a winning campaign strategy.
Participants were drawn from the Public Utility Workers Union (PUWU), Public Services Workers Union (PSWU), Ghana Registered Nurses Association (GRNA), Civil and Local Government Staff Association of Ghana (CLOGSAG), UNICOF, Health Services Workers Union (HSWU), Local Government Workers Union (LGWU), and the Federation of Universities Senior Staff Association of Ghana (FUSAG).
The rest were the Trade Unions Congress of Ghana (TUC), CSOs Coalition on Tax Justice, and the FES.
This meeting is part of a series of Tax Justice Meetings being undertaken by PSI in some selected African countries. Already, Tanzania, Nigeria, Kenya, and Ghana have held their meetings while a final conference has been scheduled to take place in Ethiopia in September.
The meeting noted that:
Following these, participants at the meeting outlined some suggestions to help the government of Ghana achieve its targets and avoid tax evasions:
In the end, it was agreed that effective domestic resource mobilization and continuous engagements between the trade unions, CSOs and the government is the best way of improving on the livelihood of workers and citizens through the provision of quality public services.
African Women Tax Justice Conference
The next tax justice activity, The Fight for African Women Tax Justice Conference, will take place in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia from September 5-6, 2018 with participants to be drawn from Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania, Tunisia, Uganda, Swaziland and South Africa.