Consult us on E-levy, it threatens our jobs – MoMo Agents Assoc.

The Mobile Money Association of Ghana says it has been left out of the ongoing consultative engagements for the soon-to-be-rolled-out Electronic Transaction Levy.

The group, which has already petioned the Minority Caucus in Parliament to push for the rejection of the tax policy say, implementing the measure without the inputs of its members will burden consumers and cripple its business operations.

“If the customer is not there, we the agents are also not there, so for the fact that there are going to be extra charges, it means that our businesses will be impacted. What we are telling the government is that we all have to sit down on how best we can model a tax that will not put either of the beneficiaries at a disadvantage. This is our position because the E-levy will have a toll on us”, General Secretary of the Association, Evans Otumfuor, said on Eyewitness News.

The agents argued that the passage of the bill will lead to over a million job losses since it will discourage the usage of their services.

In line with consultations, the government has begun holding town mall meetings on the controversial levy. The first was the one held in Koforidua on Thursday.

This is part of a series of engagements the government has planned with the aim of explaining the importance of the E-levy as well as taking feedback and inputs from relevant stakeholders on the levy.

The government also says the feedback will inform it on the implementation of the levy.

Evans Otumfuor further lamented the Finance Ministry’s failure to consult the agents ahead of the rollout of the policy.

“As of now, the Ministry of Finance, which is the chief driver of this policy, has not seen the need to engage us as a major stakeholder. You can introduce a policy, but implementation is another thing because we are going to be implementers of this policy. So I just really don’t know how the government defines the scope of stakeholders whereby they are excluding the Mobile Money agents.”

The Majority has maintained that the levy will help the government raise the needed revenue to meet the infrastructural demands of the country.

It among others imposes a 1.75% charge on all electronic transactions above a GHC100 threshold.