Development Economist, Dr. Michael Adongo Ayamga has opined that the current state of the Electronic Transfer Levy (E-levy) provides a prime opportunity for the government to, perhaps, take stock of what has happened and restrategize toward national development.
Dr. Adongo Ayamga’s comments come on the back of an earlier Tweet by a leading member of the NPP, Gabby Otchere-Darko that the government is just realising some 10 percent of targeted revenues from the E-levy.
“What options are open to the government? The question should rather be: what option, if adopted, will re-inject investor confidence in our economy? Even if we find the $3-5 billion required, will that help? E-levy which was to have given us some 600m by now has done less than 60m,” he said in a tweet on Monday, June 27.
Speaking on the Day Break Upper East Show on A1 Radio today, Tuesday, June 28, 2022, Dr. Adongo suggested that until the government does something rather pragmatic, the E-levy would continue to suffer losses.
“Immediately after the first month of the implementation of the E-levy, I did indicate that we were supposed to be raking in a daily average of between Ghc14 and Ghc15 million in order to meet the trajectory of the revised target the government had set for itself. When we were way off around Ghc1 or Ghc2 million per day, I made a suggestion that perhaps, we needed to look at the E-levy again.”
“[This is] because it was going to disrupt the economy. It had some inflationary pressures and at the same time, it was not going to yield the needed revenue or even anything near it so that we could risk the impact it had on the economy,” he said.
He encouraged the government to take a critical look at the apathy towards digital transactions.
It would be recalled that IMANI Ghana stated that the government may not meet its target of raising some ¢4.5 billion from the Electronic Transaction Levy, as about 83% of Ghanaians have reduced their mobile money transactions since the introduction of the levy.
This is according to a survey report released by IMANI Centre for Policy and Education in collaboration with Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ).
“About 83% or 8 in ten respondents indicated that their volume of transactions has changed since the implementation of the e-levy in May 2022. Of this number, about 47% indicated that they had reduced the number of mobile money transactions by about 51% to 100%. Our findings suggest that the official 24% attrition rate, which the government estimates for the first three to six months following the introduction of the e-levy, is likely to be much higher.”
“This finding implies that the forecasted GH¢4.5 billion (GHS¢60 million per month) e-levy revenue target for 2022 is unlikely to be attained given the strong consumer backlash and people finding alternative means of undertaking financial transactions,” portions of the survey said.
Source: A1radioonline.com|101.1MHz|Mark Kwasi Ahumah Smith|Ghana
