{"id":985115,"date":"2022-02-10T20:42:50","date_gmt":"2022-02-10T20:42:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/02\/10\/ndcs-yentua-demo-underway-in-accra\/"},"modified":"2022-02-10T20:42:50","modified_gmt":"2022-02-10T20:42:50","slug":"ndcs-yentua-demo-underway-in-accra","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/02\/10\/ndcs-yentua-demo-underway-in-accra\/","title":{"rendered":"NDC\u2019s \u201cYentua Demo\u201d underway in Accra"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\n Accra, Feb. 10, GNA \u2013 Hundreds of people, mainly members of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and other political and social groupings under the Coalition of Concerned Ghanaians (CCG) Thursday poured onto the streets of Accra in protest of government\u2019s proposed 1.<\/p>\n
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5 per cent levy on electronic transactions.<\/div>\n
The protest, dubbed \u201cYentua\u201d is to demonstrate disapproval to the tax policy, which is before Parliament.<\/div>\n
The demonstrators, made up of Okada Riders Association, Market Women Groups, Kayayo Association, Concerned Students Association, among others, gathered at the Obra Spot, Kwame Nkrumah Circle, Accra, around 0700 hours, clad in red for the street protest, which started at 1000 hours.<\/div>\n
Leaders of the Coalition asserted that the proposed levy would add to the \u201cexisting hardships\u201d Ghanaians were facing and called on government to explore other alternatives to generate revenue and cut down on its \u201cextravagant\u201d expenditure.<\/div>\n
Mr Edem Agbana, Deputy National Youth Organiser of the NDC, said: \u201cGovernment do not need to tax already suffering Ghanaians to generate revenue.\u201d<\/div>\n
\u201cThey should rather cut down on their extravagant expenditure, which is having a heavy toll on the State\u2019s coffers and not to exploit Ghanaians through E-levy,\u201d he added.<\/div>\n
Mr Samuel George Nartey, Member of Parliament for Ningo Prampram Constituency, said the Minority in Parliament would continue to resist the passing of the levy.<\/div>\n
He said the Government should consider seeking external support from the International Monetary Fund.<\/div>\n
Mr Joshua Anum Abio, a member of the Fishermen Association, said Government should drop the levy not to burden the \u201csuffering\u201d public.<\/div>\n
He also asked the Government to subsidise the price of premix fuel to aid the fishing industry.<\/div>\n
The 1.75 per cent E-levy has generated controversy since it was announced in the 2022 Budget and has sharply divided Parliament, with the Minority vowing to vote against its passage into law.<\/div>\n
The Government has, however, announced its intention to reduce the proposed 1.75 percent to 1.5 percent and re-present it before Parliament.<\/div>\n
The levy is to allow the Government to generate revenue from electronic transactions, including mobile money.<\/div>\n
The Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta, has explained that the E-levy is a \u201cdeep request\u201d from the President to create jobs, build more infrastructure to improve the general well-being of Ghanaians.<\/div>\n
He said the current situation where only a percentage of Ghanaians paid taxes was not favourable to realising the rapid socio-economic aspirations of the country.<\/div>\n
\u201cThe E-levy will make all Ghanaians responsible in paying taxes and reinforce their moral rights to demand for more social amenities and development,\u201d he said at a Town Hall Meeting on the Levy, at Takoradi, last week.<\/div>\n
The E-levy, he emphasised, would help boost education delivery, strengthen internal security, health care services, as well as other government flagship programmes, especially the \u201cYouStart\u201dprogramme.<\/div>\n
Less than 10 percent of Ghana\u2019s 30.8 million population pay direct taxes.<\/div>\n
\u201cOnly 2,364,348 are bearing the burden of the entire population as taxpayers as of August 2021,\u201d the Finance Minister noted in his Budget Statement to Parliament on November 17, 2021.<\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Accra, Feb. 10, GNA \u2013 Hundreds of people, mainly members of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and other political and social groupings under the Coalition of Concerned Ghanaians (CCG) Thursday poured onto the streets of Accra in protest of government\u2019s proposed 1. 5 per cent levy on electronic transactions. The protest, dubbed \u201cYentua\u201d is to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":985116,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[813,4673,2605,4780,4781],"class_list":{"0":"post-985115","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-accra","9":"tag-demo","10":"tag-ndcs","11":"tag-underway","12":"tag-yentua"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/985115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=985115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/985115\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=985115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=985115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=985115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}