Former Finance Minister, Seth Emmanuel Terkper has said that the National Identification number can serve as an alternative for the TIN numbers in any capacity.

He also believes the Ghana Identification Authority will do a much better job when it comes to mass TIN registration than the Ghana Revenue Authority will.

According to him, tasking the Ghana Revenue Authority with the responsibility of registering Ghanaians for the TIN is a waste of resources

“I’m for tax compliance but it is beyond GRA to take on the mantle of a mass registration agency, that’s not the work of GRA it is the work of Ghana identification Authority. GRA would just be wasting resources attempting to give TIN to everybody who should rather have a national identification number.

“…The national identification number can be a substitute for TIN and GRA can adopt it for TIN purposes not the other way round”.

Seth Terkper was speaking at the AccraSpeaks program where the 2019 Budget and Financial Estimates of Government were discussed.

Touching on economic growth under the erstwhile NDC administration, Mr. Tekper was pleased about the fact that the Mahama-led government did not take the country through depths of recession.

“When we are accused of bringing the GDP to 3.6 in the budget, sub-Saharan African till today is growing at 3.4. Sub-Saharan Africa was growing during that period at 1.4 percent, global economy itself was still growing at that rate”

“…The biggest achievement is that we avoided taking the country back to recession… We did a lot of investments particularly in oil and gas”, he added.