THE GHANAIAN CHRONICLE

The Chronicle carries a banner headlineon it front page which say "Crisis meeting over empty treasury...Government cheques bouncing". In the story the Chronicle says alarmed at the rate at which government was being flippant with state funds, the Bank of Ghana (BOG) summoned a crisis meeting of managing directors of all commercial banks on September 12, to salvage the little left in the national treasury after it emerged that government cheques were bouncing. According to the Chronicle, the dud cheques episode followed revelations that government expenditure had exceeded its 1997 target by 207 billion cedis with three months more to end the year. GRI

"VAT protesters are tax dodgers - Spio-Garbrah", is the headline of another front page story in the Chronicle which says the Minister of Communications, Mr Ekwow Spio-Garbrah, last week told the world that Ghanaians who mobilised people last year to protest the difficulties posed by the Value Added Tax (VAT) are 'certified tax dodgers'. The Chronicle says the Minister told the presenter of BBC's Focus on Africa that "those who were made to protest against the VAT the last time were actually mobilised by groups that have not been paying their taxes in the past; most of them urban middle class professionals who have been able to avoid taxes over the years and who saw the VAT as being against them and which they were not ready to pay". GRI