E-levy will not be cancelled – Yaw Buaben Asamoa assures Ghanaians

He said it is on this resolve that it is unlikely that the controversial electronic levy will by cancelled by the Akufo-Addo led administration.

Speaking on Accra based TV3, he said the e-levy is in its early stages therefore calls for it to be cancelled are misplaced.

“We will not cancel it, we will not cancel the e-levy because we need to calibrate it well and see how it will perform. It is barely a month old and going to the IMF doesn’t mean that IMF is going to replace our revenue flows, we still have to raise revenue.”

Calls for the cancellation of the levy have intensified since the government announced that it is going to seek a bailout from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

One of such calls came from Executive Director of the Africa Centre for Energy Policy (ACEP), Mr Benjamin Boakye.

Yaw Buaben Asamoa Pulse Ghana

Speaking on the New Day show with Berla Mundi on TV3 Monday July 4, Mr Boakye said that it was obvious from the get go that the e-levy was not going to work.

Asked whether the e-levy should be cancelled following the decision by the government to head to the IMF, Mr Boakye answered “The e-levy, we told government it wasn’t going to work from the start and they didn’t listen. It is part of the reasons why we woke up one day and we realized that we are getting 10 per cent.

“If you are trying to tax the poor they have more energy to resist, it is a pure economic fact. You rather want to help the poor to grow to become big and contribute tax. If you check our Gross Domestic Product (GDP), 71 per cent come from the formal sector. So what that tells you is that the leakages are at the formal sector, so trying to spend more money to target the 30 per cent of the poor bracket, you are not going to get revenue from there. It is clear from the data which government refused to look at.”

“I think it has to go,” he stressed.