Ghana Hiking Taxes on Miners to 35% from 25%

Corporate taxes in West Africa's Ghana, the continent's second-largest gold mining nation, are rising to 35 percent from 25 percent, and the government will collect a 10 percent windfall profit tax from miners.

The new revenue measures, contained in the 2012 budget delivered to parliament on Wednesday, follows a call by the International Monetary Fund to increase the sources of revenue.

The issue of corporate tax is an issue Ghana should look into generally, because once the capital cost is recovered, what can guarantee a maximum revenue take from Ghana's oil and gas sector is the corporate tax, Mohammed Amin Adam, Coordinator, Extractives Programme, Ibis Ghana, told Ghana Business News.

Adam suggested corporate taxes rise to 50 percent.

I think this is an injustice to Ghana because you charge lower taxes when you haven't discovered oil because the risk profile is very high, but when you have discovered oil in the quantities that we have discovered in Ghana, the risk has gone down significantly, we should be seen to be graduating over the attractive terms that we gave when we hadn't found oil.