The National Tripartite Committee (NTC) has fixed the minimum wage at GH¢3.11. The figure represents a 17 per cent increase over the previous year’s of GH¢2.65.

The social partners — the government, employers and organised labour — reached the decision at a meeting of the NTC in Accra.

A communiqué signed by the social partners and issued by the NTC said the effective date of implementation of the new wage is February 1, 2010.

The signatories were the Minister of Employment and Social Welfare (MESW), Mr Stephen Amoanor Kwao, who represented the government, the Secretary General of the Trades Union Congress (TUC), Mr Kofi Asamoah, representative of organised labour, and the Vice-President of the Ghana Employers Association (GEA), Rev Dr Joyce Aryee, who represented employers on the NTC.

The communiqué said the NTC, after considering the implication of tax on incomes, also agreed that the new minimum wage was tax exempt and should be the tax-free threshold of the 2010 personal income tax schedule.

The tax-free threshold has now been increased from GH¢240 to GH¢1,008 per annum.

The communiqué reiterated the commitment of the NTC to the improvement of incomes and productivity in both the private and the public sectors.

Mr Kwao, addressing the media after reading the communiqué, expressed appreciation to all the social partners for the consensus reached.

He also commended the Minister of Finance and Economic Planning, Dr Kwabena Duffuor, for being instrumental in the consensus reached.

He said the NTC had decided to hold meetings regularly to deliberate on issues and not meet only to negotiate on the minimum wage.

In an interview with the Daily Graphic, the Director of the Policy Analysis and Research Division (PARD) of the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning (MOFEP), Mr Kwabena Boadu Oku-Afari, said the greatest compromise that the government had to make was the tax-free threshold granted workers.

He said the tax-free threshold increase from GH¢240 to GH¢1,008 on the minimum wage was an increase of about 320 per cent.
That, he said, meant that workers would have more money in their pockets, while the government would have to forgo the income taxes it usually relied on as revenue.

Mr Asamoah said the negotiations had been characterised by a spirit of compromise.

“It was a give-and-take situation,” he said, adding that the tax threshold that the government acceded to was a great step because since 2006 it had not been revised, burdening workers and resulting in huge taxes on their salaries.

The announcement of the minimum wage paves the way for negotiations on the base salary for the Single Spine Pay Structure (SSPS), the unified salary structure for public sector employees, currently in the first phase of implementation.

The minimum wage will be the basis for the negotiation of the base salary on the SSPS that has incremental pay points from the lowest pay to the highest in public sector organisations.

The new wage, which affects both the public and the private sectors, is the wage below which no worker must be paid. It will also serve as the basis for negotiating public sector wages till the implementation of the first phase of the SSPS in June this year.

Source: Daily Graphic

Tags: ghana employment, minimum wage, NTC