Asiedu Nketia, the General Secretary of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) has ridiculed the 1.75% E-Levy electronic transactions declared by Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta during the 2022 budget to parliament.
As soon as the 2022 budget is approved by parliament, all electronic transactions across Ghana will be charged.
According to the Finance Minister, such move is to help gather revenue in the country.
Meanwhile, Ghana recorded a total GHS500 billion from e-transactions in 2020 compared with GHS78 billion in 2016.
Mr. Ofori-Atta explained, that government is charging an applicable rate of 1.75% on all electronic transactions covering mobile money payments, bank transfers, merchant payments and inward remittances, which shall be borne by the sender except inward remittances, which will be borne by the recipient.
“It is becoming clear there exists an enormous potential to increase tax revenues by bringing into the tax bracket, transactions that could be best defined as being undertaken in the informal economy.”
“Mr Speaker, to safeguard efforts being made to enhance financial inclusion and protect the vulnerable, all transactions that add up to GHS100 or less per day, which is approximately GHS3,000 per month, will be exempt from this levy,” he said.
“Mr Speaker, this new policy also comes into effect once appropriation is passed from 1st January 2022. The government will work with all industry partners to ensure that their systems and payment platforms are configured to implement the policy,” he said.
However, reacting to the step taken by the government, NDC General Secretary said, “…when they mentioned that they are scrapping road tolls, I said that there’s something bigger, something unpleasant that they are bringing on board”, indicating: “MoMo is now the game of the day it penetrates to the rural areas, the unbanked population; they use MoMo, so, if you are taxing that one and you’re rather cancelling road tolls whose incidence falls on vehicle owners, it means that it is not a pro-people budget at all. You don’t maximize revenue at the expense of people who are overtaxed”. Mr. Asiedu Nketia told journalists in parliament after the 2022 budget.
