Gov’t yet to listen to our concerns on e-levy – MoMo Agents Association

Evans Otomfuor, the General Secretary for the Mobile Money (MoMo) Agents Association, has disclosed they never received any response from the Finance Ministry after sending several letters to them for an engagement on the e-levy.

He made these submissions on Happy98.9FM’s Epa Hoa Daben political show, the association has taken the necessary steps in their capacity to reach out to policy makers but to no avail when they are major stakeholders to be affected by the introduction of the e-levy.

“We served letters to the Ministry of Finance to grant us audience and there was no feedback till date. We handled both the Majority and Minority groups letters as well,” he said.

However, there has been absolute no reaction from the sector ministry to consider the association’s standpoint on the e-levy.

Asked if they were invited for the town hall meeting led by Finance Minister, Ken Ofori Atta to address concerns on the e-levy he responded in the negative.

“We did not received any letter from gov’t which indicated that we were invited as stakeholders. We were aware of the town hall meeting courtesy of social media platforms. We never received any official invitation from gov’t as a major stakeholder in the industry,” Evans Otumfour told Don Kwabena Prah.

“Since the introduction of the e-levy, we have never been engaged by the Finance Minister. No gov’t institution has also taken our concerns into consideration. Therefore from the onset there has been a clear denial from gov’t to recognize us as important stakeholders. If that has been well spelt out then why should we keep pushing?” he added.

Meanwhile, the government on Thursday, January 27, 2022 held a major Town Hall Meeting on the Electronic Transactions Levy (E-levy).

The exercise forms part of series of engagements aimed at explaining the basics and importance of the E-levy transaction as well as take feedback and inputs from relevant stakeholders that will inform government on the implementation of the levy.

The E-levy is a new tax measure introduced by government in the 2022 Budget on basic transactions related to digital payments and electronic platform transactions. This means a charge of 1.75% will apply to electronic transactions that are more than GH¢100.00 on a daily basis.