GIFMIS Coordinator tells businesses to comply with tax procedures
Ms Margaret Sefah, Project Coordinator of Ghana Integrated Financial Management Information System, (GIFMIS), has cautioned businesses to comply with tax procedures to enable them to transact business with government.
She said businesses without tax payer identification numbers and those that fall to register to pay Value Added Tax (VAT) would be prevented from doing business with government.
Ms Sefah made the remarks in Ho on Friday when she met government workers selected from the accounts, stores, procurement and audit departments, within the Ho Municipal Area.
She said ‘’businesses will be untraceable on the platform of the impending computerized public funds management scheme; Ghana Integrated Financial Management Information System.
The Ho Municipality is one of the seven Metropolitan and Municipal Assemblies selected to pilot GIFMIS implementation, to prelude the adoption of the system countrywide.
The rest are Accra, Kumasi, Tema and Cape Coast Metropolitan Assemblies and Obuasi and Tarkwa Municipal Assemblies.
Ms Sefah said with time, all public fund transactions and segments would integrate and interface on the GIFMIS, which has a large scope, with comprehensive in-built checks.
Mr Mac-Effort Adadey, Deputy GIFMIS Project Director, said the meeting was to give participants an overview of the project and solicit suggestions before its full implementation.
He cautioned that staff who would not be serious with the training could be stranded, unable to operate the system when its starts.
Mr Moses Akagla, Volta Regional Director of the Controller and Accountant-General’s Department (CAGD), said the system, which was already being used at the national and regional levels, would take out the drudgery associated with the manual financial management processes.
He said ‘’every job in the chain, including supply management, disbursements; vouchers for payments; as well as warranty and audit would be done on the platform, thus cutting out a lot of travels’’.
Mr Akagla asked the various departments to send the “right type of people” for the training sessions.
The CAGD in collaboration with the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning supported jointly by the World Bank, Department For International Development (DFID), European Union (EU) and Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA) is implementing GIFMIS.
In a related development, a statement to the GNA, stated that the programme forms part of the Public Financial Management Reform programme to improve fiscal discipline and macro-economic stability in the country.
Source: GNA