Ghana Beyond Aid requires Ghanaians to support E-levy – Ursula

Government’s agenda to make Ghana self-reliant requires Ghanaians to support the 1.75 per cent Electronic Transaction Levy (E-Levy) as their civic responsibility to national development.

This, therefore, makes it more important for Ghana to depend on her internally generated funds to support socio-economic development than continue to borrow and plunge the nation into debt.

Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, Minister of Communications and Digitisation, said this at the Town Hall Meeting on E-Levy in Koforidua, jointly organised by the Ministries of Information, Finance, and Communications and Digitisation.

"So long as we are dependent on donors they will dictate the pave of our development. We need to rely less on donors to be truly independent," she said.

Owusu-Ekuful said the E-Levy presented enormous benefits for the Government to build a robust digital infrastructure and create a digital marketplace to connect buyers and sellers.

It would also help the population to access electronic platforms such as e-health and e-agriculture from the comfort of their homes.

She said the use of digital transactions would significantly reduce corruption, theft, embezzlement and all forms of financial malfeasance as it would be easier to trace culprits.



Ken Ofori-Atta, the Minister of Finance, highlighted several benefits for financing the development needs of the people, rationalising the need for the introduction of the E-Levy.

He mentioned transactions that the E-Levy would cover to include mobile money transfers between accounts on the same electronic money issuer, bank transfers on a digital platform or application, which originates from a bank account belonging to an individual, and transfers from mobile money accounts.

He stated that the E-Levy transfers would not cover cumulative transfers of 100 Ghana cedis per day made by the same person, transfers between accounts owned by the same person, electronic clearing of cheques, and transfers between the principal, master agent, and agent's account.

On the rationale for the E-Levy, Ofori-Atta said it was to introduce an innovative way of raising tax revenue and leveraging the digitalisation of Ghana’s economy.

It is also to broaden the tax base to include sections of the population who remain outside the formal economy and, as such, largely untaxed.

Alexander Kwamina Afenyo-Markin, the Deputy Majority Leader in Parliament, called on all and sundry to embrace the policy when it came on board as there would be a transparent system to monitor and manage it.

The Town Hall meeting drew several sections of the public, including market women, teachers, drivers and assembly members, to the Ascension Presbyterian Church.

Some participants recommended that important national issues such as the E-levy should be explained using mediums like community information centres to get the grassroots to appreciate it better.