Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu, the Majority Leader in Parliament, has stated that the government underestimated the opposition to the introduction of the E-levy policy in the 2022 budget statement.
He stated that they expected some opposition when introducing the policy, but not of this magnitude.
In an exclusive interview with TV3’s Benjamin Aidoo, Suame lawmaker and leader of Government Business in Parliament said, “You will see the Finance Minister organizing townhall meetings in various regional capitals.”
Perhaps we underestimated the opposition. People will not openly embrace the imposition of taxes on any human institution, so we expected some resistance because it is a new levy or tax that we are introducing, but we may have underestimated the strength of the resistance.
“Maybe, what we are doing now, I know some of my colleagues are out in various regions and constituencies trying to explain matters to their constituents, with hindsight maybe, this ought to have preceded the introduction of the E-levy. Perhaps, next time we will do better.
“But as I said we are still engaging and I want to believe that we will certainly bring this to successful completion.”
The Minority in Parliament rejected the introduction of the E-levy.
The Minority Leader Haruna Iddrisu said the policy is a disincentive to the growth of digital economy hence, the Minority will not support it.
Speaking at a post budget workshop in Ho on Saturday November 20, he said “Mr Speaker, understandably, we see that the Minister of Finance seeks to introduce some measures including the now popularly declared e-levy or digital levy as some have quite named it.
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“Mr Speaker, our concern is whether the e-levy itself is not and will not be a disincentive to the growth of digital economy in our country . We are convinced that the e-levy may as well even be a disincentive to investment and a disincentive to private sector development in our country. We in the minority may not and will not support government with the introduction of that particular e-levy . We are unable to build national consensus on that particular matter.”
The Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta expressed shock at the rejection of the E-levy proposal by some youth of this country including some free senior high school beneficiaries.
He asked whether they know what the cost of rejecting the E-levy will be, given that the government needs resources to fund the programme and other initiatives.
Speaking at the Government’s 3rd Townhall meeting to sensitize the public on the need for the E-levy to be passed by Parliament in Tamale on Thursday February 10, he said “If I look at E-levy for instance, and I say that this year we intend to collect 7billion cedis and I look at mobile money subscribers and there are over 21million of us.
“So assuming I divide this 7billion by 21million of us , it is about 300 cedis a year for each person, divide by 12.
“So when I see the energy especially with which graduates who have gone through free senior high are against E-levy, I ask whether the they are calculating what the cost is. And I ask in truthfulness that does any graduate make more than 8000 or 5000?
“Assuming you are a graduate and you even made 100,000 cedis a year and you transfer all of that through MoMo, how much will that be? 10 per cent of 100,000 is 10,000 , so a third of that is 3000. So 3000 cedis for your roads , for your free education , for all of that and you are up in arms.
“So truly who should be paying for it? You have every responsibility to ask me to account for it. But we as a people, we can’t pretend that we don’t need these resources to do what we are doing. No graduate makes 100,000 cedis a year.”
Regarding calls to go to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Mr Ofori-Atta insisted that Ghana would not return to the Bretton Woods institution for support in order to deal with the challenges that the local economy is going through at the moment.
Doing so, he said, will have dire consequences.
He also indicated that Ghana had the capacity to raise domestic revenue for development. The government has been called upon to return to the IMF for support instead of relying on the proposed E-levy for revenue.
