The government has again increased the GH611 million income target for the Electronic Transfer Levy (E-Levy) for this year.
After the e-levy bill’s approval was delayed, the government’s original projection of roughly GH6.9 billion in revenue from the collection of the levy on mobile money and other electronic transactions was reduced downward to about GH4.9 billion.
The tax on mobile money and other electronic transactions, which was initially set at 1.75 percent, was eventually lowered to 1.5 percent in response to objections from various parties.
It was anticipated that the tax would not accomplish its intended goal after the delay in the adoption of the e-levy bill by Parliament.
In fact, the levy has only been in place for three months and has performed appallingly.
Gabby Asare Otchere-Darko, a prominent member of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), remarked that since the tax measure’s adoption, just 10% of the anticipated money has been earned.
The new tax, which many Ghanaians have passionately opposed, only brought in GH93.7 million of the GH1.46 billion target for the first half of this year, according to figures from the 2022 mid-year budget review.
The government has again lowered the e-revenue levy’s projection for 2022 to GH611 million in order to account for this. The mid-year budget review paper also mentioned this almost 90 percent reduction.
Since then, calls from stakeholders and Ghanaians as a whole to eliminate the electronic transfer levy have increased.
Despite this, statistics from the Bank of Ghana shows that the amount of Mobile Money transactions, from which the fee is mostly derived, has not decreased considerably.
