Mr Ernest Kofi Owusu Bempah, Convener, ‘Fixing The Country Movement’
Members of a pro-New Patriotic Party pressure group, ‘Fixing The Country Movement’, has described the NDC’s opposition to the government’s proposed Electronic Transavcations Levy (E-Levy) as a total surprise and an attempt to instigate the public to reject the levy.
Addressing the press on Monday, the convener of the group, Ernest Kofi Owusu Bempah, said the hypocrisy and double standard of the NDC on the matter of the E-Levy was beginning to take a toll on all right thinking Ghanaians.
Mr Owusu Bempah added that it was surprising that the opposition NDC would deliberately instigate Ghanaians against the E-Levy, while it also promised to introduce some form of electronic transaction levy in its 2020 manifesto.
“Shockingly, the NDC in their 2020 Manifesto, actually promised to introduce some form of Electronic Transaction levy, which the Akufo-Addo administration is currently pursuing amid stiff resistance from the NDC.
“The E-Levy policy initiative which the NDC is hypocritically opposing was captured on Page 99 point 8.7 under Financial Inclusion and Electronic Payments (FINTECH) in their 2020 People’s Manifesto,” Mr Owusu Bempah disclosed.
Surprised
He was surprised that the NDC had proposed, among other things, it “will introduce a uniform transaction fee policy to guide the electronic payments industry.”
“They also said the next NDC government will ‘work with merchants to encourage their clients to pay for goods and services electronically’. As a matter of fact, they promised to ‘promote digital finance to drive financial inclusion, and financial development,’ as well as ‘work with the various stakeholders in the financial and technology sectors to collaborate and design a resilient financial system through partnerships,” he said.
According to him, the NDC also promised to “migrate and enforce all Person-to-Government (P2G) payments into the electronic payment ecosystem”.
“They said this will start with migrating all major revenue-generating ventures of Government into e-Payment platforms such as was envisaged under the e-Ghana Project and will be applicable in all sectors – financial and non-financial,” and also “allow each institution to develop its own portal system where Government services by that institution will be conducted and payment made online. For a start, notable Government institutions such as the Passport Office, DVLA, Metropolitan Assemblies, Police Departments, Birth and Death Registry will be migrated,” he added.
He also recalled how the NDC imposed 17.5% as VAT on financial services when it was in government in the 90s.
He urged the NDC and its allies in the media to put politics aside and make constructive inputs into the bill, saying the entrenched position of the NDC can only be borne out of its political interests and not the interest of Ghanaians.
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