The Minority Leader, Haruna Iddrisu, has charged the Finance Committee of Parliament to hold further consultations beyond what the government is undertaking on the controversial E-Levy.
This plea follows a petition by the Mobile Money Agents Association to the minority and majority against the approval of the E-Levy bill.
The agents argued that the passage of the bill will lead to over a million job losses, since it will discourage usage of their services.
The E-levy is a new tax measure introduced by the government in the 2022 Budget on basic transactions related to digital payments and electronic platform transactions.
A charge of 1.75% will apply to electronic transactions that are more than GHS 100 on a daily basis.
The General Secretary of the group, Evans Otumfuo, in presenting the petition, appealed against the hasty passage of the bill.
“There are some ills in the implementation which is very important that we draw government’s attention to and of course the Minority also plays a major role there in the passage”.
On his part, the Minority Leader charged the Finance Committee to consider public sentiments in their deliberations.
“If we respect the sensibility of stakeholders and Ghanaians, the Finance Committee of Parliament should not rush the process of an E-Levy by certificate of urgency.”
“What mobile money agents have done is to indicate to us that stakeholder consultation is important and therefore it’s compelling and necessary that your committee considers that, not the Minister of Finance alone,” Mr. Iddrisu said.
In line with consultations, the government will be holding a town mall meeting on the controversial levy today.
This is part of a series of engagements the government has planned with the aim of explaining the importance of the E-levy as well as taking feedback and inputs from relevant stakeholders on the levy.
The government also says the feedback will inform it on the implementation of the levy.
