The Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) has collected GH¢185.5 billion in tax revenue as at October 2026, exceeding its target for the period by GH¢1.1 billion and putting it firmly on course to achieve its full-year revenue target of GH¢237 billion.
Commissioner-General of the GRA, Anthony Kwasi Sarpong, disclosed this at the 15th Ghana Economic Forum in Accra, where he said the Authority’s October performance reflected improvements in revenue administration, digitalisation and enforcement.
The GH¢185.5 billion collected represents approximately 78.3 percent of the Authority’s annual target, which includes Energy Sector Levies Act (ESLA) collections.
The October outturn exceeded the period target of GH¢184.4 billion, providing an indication of the Authority’s progress towards meeting its ambitious revenue mobilisation objective for the year.
Mr. Sarpong said the performance was the result of deliberate institutional reforms rather than chance, pointing to legislative reviews, technology deployment and improvements in customs administration as important contributors to the gains.
The Authority collected GH¢153 billion in 2024 before increasing its revenue mobilisation to GH¢182 billion in 2025. It is targeting GH¢237 billion this year as part of a longer-term ambition to double its 2024 collections to approximately GH¢310 billion by December 2028.
To sustain the momentum, the GRA is intensifying efforts to improve tax compliance, widen the tax base and reduce revenue leakages, particularly in areas where economic activities remain outside the formal tax system.
Among the key interventions is the deployment of Publican AI for customs classification and valuation, which Mr. Sarpong said yields not less than US$100 million per month.
The Authority has also accelerated implementation of the Integrated Tax Administration System (ITAS), which had stalled for four years up to December 31, 2024, but was implemented within nine months under the current administration.
Another intervention is the Sentinel system, which enables real-time collection of VAT on digital services, while the GRA has advanced the pilot implementation of fiscal electronic devices, with full implementation expected in 2027.
Legislative reforms are also supporting the mobilisation drive, with reviews of VAT, customs and excise legislation either completed or progressing, alongside ongoing work on the Income Tax Act.
Mr. Sarpong noted that the International Monetary Fund had recognised Ghana’s strong revenue collections in 2026 during its recently concluded first review of the country’s Policy Coordination Instrument.
The Fund also acknowledged the early completion of customs and excise legislative reviews and projected further increases in non-oil revenue in 2027, supported by legislative and administrative reforms.
However, the Commissioner-General stressed that meeting revenue targets should not depend on repeatedly increasing the tax burden on existing compliant taxpayers.
Instead, the GRA intends to bring more businesses and individuals into the tax net, strengthen intelligence-led enforcement and make compliance simpler and less costly.
He said the Authority’s longer-term ambition was to build a revenue system that grows alongside the economy, allowing Ghana to finance its development priorities through domestic resources while maintaining fiscal stability.
The Ghana Economic Forum
The 15th Ghana Economic Forum (GEF) is a two-day high-level national dialogue organized by the Business & Financial Times (B&FT) on November 10-11, 2026. The Forum was on the theme, “From Stabilization to Scale: Mobilizing Capital, Technology and Policy for Ghana’s Next Industrial Wave”.
Source: B&FT
