Reduce E-Levy To 0.1% – Dr. Ashigbey To Government

The Ceo of the Ghana Telecommunications Chamber, Dr. Ken Ashigbey, has called for the reduction of electronic transactions levy (E-levy) from 1.5% to 0.1%. According to him, the introduction of the e-levy at 1.5% has proven counterproductive to both the government and also the development of Ghana’s digital economy. He explained

that while calling for a total scrap of the tax, measure would be insensitive considering the government’s dire need for money amidst an economic turmoil, reducing it to 0.1% would also revamp the digital economy thus generating more revenue for government. He said, Our proposition is the fact that, you know, they should scrap

it. But we need to be real, government needs money at this particular stage. The deficit position is not good for industry, it affects industry, it’s one of the things that would account for the depreciation of the cedi. The macros would be destabilized. So we think that the best thing to do is to reduce the levy. Some in the industry

have talked about 0.5, but I have said that the best thing to do is to do 0.1. He added that while the government reduces the rate, they should also place a cap on it. Dr. Ken Ashigbey suggested that transactions that are 5,000 cedis and above should only attract a fixed e-levy rate to also attract more large transactions on mobile money

platforms. According to him, the current cap-less system makes it most undesirable to transact business with large sums of money via digital platforms. You know, push the level down to 0.1 and then put a cap on it. Say 5,000 cedis. At 5,000 cedis the levy is fixed so that if anybody wants to send 10,000 cedis, you know, that will

happen, he said. Take out the discrimination between the 20,000 that you give to the banks and then you give to mobile money so that the discrimination is not based on that, he added.