Ghana Tourism Authority enforces 1% levy

The Ghana Tourism Authority on Thursday embarked on an enforcement exercise to retrieve the one per cent tourism levy from four establishments in Accra who have failed to pay.

The establishments include; Country Kitchen, the Buika and Masera restaurants all at Osu and Ramada Resort at Nungua.

Mr Abraham Tetteh, the Administrator, Tourism Development Fund, said most of the establishments mandated to pay the levy had refused to do so.

He said the exercise was to caution them to pay the monies before close of the day or their establishments would be closed down as per the law.

Mr Tetteh said the authority had started field exercises to close down such establishments as the law provided that establishments that failed to pay the levies into the fund were given demand notices after which they would be given some time to make payments.

He said the four establishments in total owed the fund GH¢65, 501.34 including their established liability, a penalty and fine.

Mr Tetteh said those establishments had been given payment warrants to make payments as far back as April 2015, but until now such payments had not been made.

He called on other establishments across the country that had refused to pay the levy to start doing so with immediate effect to prevent their establishments from being closed down.

Most of the establishments visited promised to follow the directive, appealing to the Authority to give them some time to make payments, while other insisted that they had already made payments which might not had reflected on the data base.

Mr Alex Yeboah, Manager of Mazera Restaurant, appealed to the Authority to sensitise the public on the fund as most patrons refused to pay the levy based on lack of education.

Source: GNA