Afrobarometer Report on public confidence in the safety of
Ghana’s financial institutions, following the clean up in the sector, indicates
over 70% of Ghanaians trust mobile money than other financial institutions.
The Report, put together
by CDD-Ghana, noted that in spite of the clean up, 83% of Ghanaians
still trust in banks, but the reputation of savings and loans, microfinance and
traditional susu companies has declined considerably.
Only 8% of the 2,400 Ghanaians surveyed said they will save
with savings and loans; another 8% trust in traditional susu, while 7% says
they still trust microfinance companies.
Meanwhile, some 11% say they would rather keep their moneys
at home instead of saving with any
financial institution.
But even though mobile money is about the latest addition to the options in the financial sector, a whopping 72% of respondents say they either trust it fully or trust it somewhat.
MoMo Stats
Public confidence in Mobile Money is indeed aptly reflected
in the subscription, and transaction volume and value figures released by the
Telecoms Chamber recently.
The figures indicate that currently, there are 13 million
active mobile money wallets, doing 4 million transactions daily, and the
balance of cash floating on the mobile money platform is a whopping GHC2.6
billion at any point in time.
The Chamber also noted that last year alone, the telecom
operators paid GHC2.2 billion in taxes, and that included taxes on the revenue
they make from mobile money services.
Afrobarometer Monitoring and Evaluation Officer at
CDD-Ghana, Samuel Adusei Baaye told Adom News Mobile Money is clearly a key
driver of financial inclusion and needs to be protected from fraudsters and
from over taxation.
He said plans by the Communications Ministry to tax mobile
money fees of the telcos is a threat to the growth of the service and its role
in boosting financial inclusion.
Samuel Adusei Baaye argued that whatever tax government
places on the mobile money earnings of telcos will be transferred to customers
and that can discourage usage of the service and thus affect financial
inclusion negatively.
MoMo earnings
The Communications Minister, Ursula Owusu Ekuful has said
her target is not to burden customers with taxes on mobile money services, but
to tax the estimated GHC71 million services charges that telcos earn from
mobile money every month.
But she, herself, admitted that her colleague Finance
Minister, Ken Ofori- Atta disagrees with her call for the state to tax the
earnings of telcos from Mobile Money outside of what they already pay as part
of their taxes on all their revenue streams.
The CDD-Ghana official says he agrees with the position of
the Finance Minister, because “we are already grappling with the 9%
Communications Service Tax (CST) so adding on another tax will not be good for
mobilising funds into the financial sector for national development.”
He believes the more affordable Mobile Money services are,
the higher the potential for it to mobilize more money into the financial
sector, which can then be accessed by companies to expand and create more jobs
and impact lives directly.
“It is understandable that government needs to find
innovative ways to generate revenue for development, but taxing mobile money
earnings of telcos in addition to what they already pay would only affect
customers in the long run and make the country lose the financial inclusion
battle,” Samuel Adusei Baaye said.
