Former Finance Minister, Dr Kwabena Duffuor has urged the Akufo-Addo government to eliminate the Electronic Transfer Levy (E-Levy) if it is not generating enough revenue as expected.
He described the E-Levy as a “nuisance tax” and said that it should be scrapped if it is not meeting its revenue targets.
According to him, we need to ask ourselves, if we are getting enough from it and if we are not, then it is a nuisance tax, and we should scrap it.
The Ghana Chamber of Telecommunications commenced the implementation of the revised E-Levy rate of 1% on January 11, 2023.
This was after the government, during the 2023 Budget and Economic Policy Statement, reviewed the 1.5% E-Levy downwards to 1% effective January 2023.
However, the E-Levy has failed to meet all of its revenue targets since its introduction. In April 2022, telcos registered an over 300,000 loss of mobile money subscribers.
After the implementation of the levy, telcos registered an over 300,000 loss of mobile money subscribers in April 2022.
According to the Summary of Economic and Financial Data (May 2022), active mobile money subscribers saw a decline in April to 18.6 million from the 18.9 million recorded the previous month.
The mobile money industry also lost 4,000 active agents, as their number declined to 454,000 in April from the previous month’s 458,000.
The value of transactions also dropped by GH¢2.8 billion within the period under discussion.