The opposition Member of Parliament for Ningo Prampram, Samuel Nartey George, has pointed out what he sees to be clear disparities between the government’s Electronic Transactions Levy and a proposal made in the 2020 manifesto of the National Democratic Congress.

The government in response to the NDC’s antipathy to the E-Levy bill has pointed portions of the party’s manifesto stating that the opposition party intended to introduce a similar tax policy if they won the 2020 presidential elections.

But responding to the allegations in a Facebook post sighted by GhanaWeb, Sam George who is a member of the minority side of parliament fiercely opposing the E-Levy insists that what his party sought to do is entirely different.

According to the NDC MP who describes the E-Levy bill which seeks to impose a 1.75% tax rate on all electronic transactions as obnoxious, the NDC “had absolutely no intention of introducing an e-levy like the NPP has!”

“I have seen copious references made to paragraph 8.7(c) on page 99 of the 2020 People's Manifesto and an attempt to suggest that what we described as ‘a uniform transaction fee policy to guide the electronic payments industry’ was a dream to introduce something similar to the obnoxious e-Levy. Nothing could be further away from the truth,” he noted.

In his explanation of the NDC’s policy plan, Sam George justified that unlike the current E-Levy bill which he contends will impose hardship on Ghanaians, the NDC was committed to create a uniform rate for electronic transactions while being disposed much lower rates.

“Even as we speak today, there is no uniformity of transaction fees across various EMI platforms. Transacting the same value of money could attract a cost of 0% to as high as 1.5% depending on the platform being used for payment. It is this disparity across the electronics payments industry that we sought to implement.

“A quick check with my notes and the attached memorandum to the main committee that contained our technical justifications for our policy proposals would show that we were actually disposed to a uniform 0% transaction fee across the various platforms for on-net transactions and a much lower rate for interconnecting transactions,” he indicated.

He thus tagged the governing party’s attempt to liken the E-Levy to the NDC’s policy as lazy thinking.

“It is lazy thinking, poor logic and crass incompetence for anyone with the slightest technical understanding to equate both policies. The obnoxious e-Levy is the baggage of the NPP and they should answer to the people of Ghana and stop looking for a witchcraft mate,” he added.

Source: Ghanaweb