Vice-President Mahamudu Bawumia has said as a result of making the Ghana card the tax identification number (TIN), there was an exponential increase the number of adults with a TIN.

“When we came into office in 2017, only 4 per cent of adults in Ghana had a tax identification number and you can see most of those are in the formal sector; not many will be registered for taxes”.

“We said: ‘Let’s make the Ghana card number the tax identification number’. Immediately we did that, the number of people that have tax identification numbers has suddenly gone up from 4 per cent to 85 per cent”.

“So, now the taxman knows exactly who has filed, who has not filed at any particular time; and not only do we know them, we also have their digital address, so, we know where they live. So, tax collection is going to take a different path going forward because we now have data”, Dr Bawumia said illustrated to demonstrate the importance of the Ghana card and also justify his earlier comment that he would prefer the card to 1,000 interchanges because the former wields the potential to transform Ghana.

Buttressing his point further, Dr Bawumia said the issue of fake birth certificates, for example, “was a big problem for our country and it made it very difficult for people to trust our documents at embassies and everywhere because people would just go and have fake certificates”.

“In fact, when we went to the Births and Deaths Registry, we found three different databases; we had to harmonise the databases but once you have a unique identity, you will not have fake birth certificates, there’ll be no football age verses normal age”, he noted, adding: “That business will come to an end”.

“Recently, you would know that our women’s team was banned for presenting some overage players. Hopefully, now, we are going to strictly require that they bring their Ghana card before they are going to be registered to play”.

The Ghana card is a valid verification document issued by the National Identification Authority (NIA) to Ghanaians and resident foreign nationals living everywhere for the purpose of identification.

The card bears personal information about the individuals whose identity can be verified at all times. The NIA National Identity System utilises three types of biometric technology for identification purposes.

These are the fingerprints unique to each individual in the form of digitised templates, and facial templates in the form of a digitised colour photo of the cardholder and the iris.

The card contains basic identification information including a photograph of the cardholder, along with a name, date of birth, height, and a personal identification number that has been randomly generated and assigned to the holder and has an expiry date.