Impact of elimination of trade taxes on poverty and income distribution in Ghana

Type Working Paper
Title Impact of elimination of trade taxes on poverty and income distribution in Ghana
Author(s)
Publication (Day/Month/Year) 2005
URL https://books.google.com/books?id=lBoeBRG4a9wC
Abstract
Ghana has adopted the Poverty Reduction Strategy, which emphasizes increased focus on poverty reduction in the design and implementation of its policies. Trade liberalization is one of the ways through which poverty could be reduced. However, trade liberalization results in decreased fiscal revenue of the government. There is a need to co-ordinate fiscal reforms with trade liberalization. The present study uses the CGE model and examines the impact of alternative fiscal reforms; in which lost tariff revenue is compensated by a lump-sum tax, on the poverty and income distributions of households. The study tests the hypothesis that elimination of trade related import taxes accompanied by an increase in VAT reduce the incidence, depth and severity of household poverty and improve the income distributions of households. On the other hand, the study tests the hypothesis that the elimination of export taxes accompanied by an increase in VAT increase the incidence, depth, severity of household poverty and worsens the income distributions of households.

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