The Member of Parliament (MP) for Kwadaso Constituency in the Ashanti Region, Dr Kingsley Nyarko, has appealed to the citizenry to accept innovative revenue enhancing interventions as a rare opportunity to help the country out from her perennial revenue enhancement difficulties.
“The Electronic transaction Levy (e-levy), though cannot be the solution to all the socio-economic ills, will be one of the most innovative solutions to give the country additional revenue and the fiscal space to improve upon the socioeconomic fortunes since the government has stated the levy will widen the tax net as it can raise an extra GH¢6.9 billion in 2022,” he asserted.
Dr Nyarko entreated Ghanaians to accept the e-levy which had been passed by Parliament, to help grow the economy and was excited the levy had finally been passed to be a game-changer to broaden the tax net and help generate enough revenue for government projects.
“I am excited during Parliament’s sitting on March 29, we passed the 1.5 per cent e-levy despite the Minority MPs walking out of the Chamber which is a new tax measure introduced by the government in the 2022 Budget Statement and Economic Policy on basic transactions related to digital payments and electronic platform transactions.
“The e-levy since its announcement, has been the topic of discussion as some citizens have expressed dissatisfaction about it and there has also been varied arguments by financial and tax experts concerning it and have suffered full attention of the hung Parliament,” Dr Nyarko observed.
He indicated that in 2019, the world was hit with the COVID-19 pandemic that had destabilised all economies, gave scientists and researchers tough time, it was still posing health and economic challenges to countries around the globe and threats posed by the virus made the government take decisions and steps in order to contain it and also to protect lives and properties.
Dr Nyarko said the pandemic had negatively impacted the economy, could not be denied the needed collective efforts to address it and the outbreak of the pandemic with its associated lockdowns, reduced anticipated revenue to GH¢11.9 billion, increased expenditure to GH¢14.1 billion, which meant effective and efficient fiscal measures had to be implemented to revive economy. -GNA
