The President of the Association of Ghana Industries (AGI) for Greater Accra, Tsonam Akpeloo, has described the 2025 budget as promising and sustainable, particularly for the private sector.
According to him, the scrapping of the Electronic Transaction Levy (E-Levy) will have a significant impact on businesses, as many of their financial transactions were subject to double charges due to the existence of the levy.
Speaking at the Oxfam Tax Dialogue on Channel One TV on March 18, Akpeloo emphasized that eliminating some taxes would ease the burden on businesses, especially Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), which rely heavily on mobile money transactions.
“The budget looks promising, even though we are not yet out of the hook, we still have concerns but it looks promising. It comes across as a more stabilized budget for us in the private sector. Especially because some of the taxes that we have always advocated have been taken out, like the E-Levy for example.
“If you follow advocacy, you will realize that most of the businesses that are SMEs really use mobile money for transactions, so the E-Levy thing was a big deal.
“It was affecting them significantly. But our view is that the tax rate to GDP ratio should be worked on to decrease. As we speak now, it is about 40%, but we should be doing about 20%. What it means is that we have to expand the tax basket,” he stated.
As part of efforts to ease the tax burden, the Finance Minister, on March 11, announced plans to abolish several taxes, including
– The 1% Electronic Levy (E-Levy)
– Betting Tax
– Emission Levy on industries and vehicles
– VAT on motor vehicle insurance policies
– 1.5% withholding tax on the winnings of unprocessed gold by small-scale miners
In line with these commitments, the Finance Minister, Dr Cassiel Ato Forson, has laid before Parliament the Electronic Transfer Levy (Repeal) Bill 2025, the Emissions Levy (Repeal) Bill 2025, and the Income Tax Amendment Bill 2025.
These financial bills seek to formally abolish the E-Levy, remove the emissions levy, and eliminate the 10% withholding tax on betting winnings, as promised in the 2025 budget presented on behalf of President John Dramani Mahama.
