Members of the Institute of Financial and Economics Journalists (IFEJ) and Parliamentary Press Corps (PPC) have ended a day’s workshop on the 2019 Budget and Economic Policy presented to Parliament by the Fnance Minister last Thursday.

The workshop put together by the Ministry of Finance, was aimed at empowering members of IFEJ and PPC to better inform their audiences on the various components of the budget.

The engagement was an annual joint effort between the Ministry of Finance, IFEJ and PPC.

Resource persons from the Ministry’s Technical Departments, who were involved in the crafting of the Budget, took the participants through the important highlights, explaining the technical components in order to allow members to better understand the concepts.

Meanwhile, a rep from the Ghana Revenue Authority, Mr Anthony Dzadra h hinted that, Ghana will soon move away from the collection of import taxes and focus on consumption and direct taxes.

According to him,” majority of Ghanaians and companies deliberately refuse to pay taxes”.

He said his outfit had been appealing to citizens and companies to do well to honour their tax obligations to enable government develop the country.

He further reminded Ghanaians to register for the Tax Identification Numbers (TIN).

According to him, as indicated by the Finance Minister in the budget statement, the new Tax Identification Number (TIN) in 2019 will become a requirement to access social interventions and services such as free SHS, driver’s license, car registration, passport and national health insurance and many others.

The President of IFEJ, Mr. Rayborn Bulley, on his part explained that, it was important for Journalists, beyond the reading of the Budget Statement in Parliament, interrogate the issues raised.

According to him, the role of the media had become even more important following the approval of the budget.

“Once the budget is finally approved by Parliament, I expect we Journalists, to take that document and actually peruse it, tease out the very important news that relate to social and infrastructure development of the people so that we can find out whether what is written in it is actually what is on the ground,” he said.

Mr. Christian Kpesese, deputy secretary of PPC, who represented the Dean of the Press  Corps, also commended the Ministry for the opportunity granted journalists.

He, however, urged his colleagues to open up next year’s engagement to cover other Journalists outside the two groups, particularly, morning show hosts.

He also noted that it would be important to have the Minister or any of his deputies at such engagements in order to address policy issues which some of the technocrats could not speak to.