Ken Ofori-Atta, Finance Minister, has warned of catastrophic economic implications if the Electronic Transaction Levy, or E-Levy, bill fails to pass.
Speaking during a government town hall meeting in Koforidua to persuade the people to accept the tax policy, he emphasized that economic advances gained by the government in previous years would be reversed if Ghanaians do not support the effort.
The minority in Parliament has said that they would not support the bill, but the Finance Minister claims that Ghana’s recent Fitch downgrade is a foreshadowing of what is to come if the bill is not enacted.
“If we don’t do this E-levy, we are just pushing ourselves in a way that would potentially end up in such a disaster. There was a warning of that because last week was a very difficult week for the country.”
“Last week we got downgraded by Fitch because they do not believe we could raise the revenues that we had forecasted because we were fighting about E-levy…
so we need to moderate that because the consequences are quick,” he said.
According to him, the levy is necessary for the country’s economic fortunes; hence, Ghanaians should be enthusiastic about the policy since “it will give us about 6.9 billion.”
On Wednesday, at the closing ceremony of the 73rd University of Ghana Annual New Year School and Conference, the Minister reaffirmed that the time had come for the citizenry to “burden share” in the country’s growth with the government by paying the tax.
He then encouraged citizens to ‘convince’ their members of Parliament to support the law and hold him accountable for all revenues and expense.
“What I was really expecting was for Parliament to say, we’re going to get $6.9 billion from this new tax revenue measure. So how then do you [Finance Minister] report to me [Parliament] on a quarterly basis on the uses of the fund and its application so that we move on,” he said.
Meanwhile, FixTheCountry convener Oliver Barker-Vormawor claims that members of the organization were turned away from the town hall meeting and assaulted.
In an interview with JoyNews, he stated that they had filed a complaint with the police in order to conduct additional investigations and impose necessary punishments.
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SOURCE: myjoyonline
