Following the implementation of the 1% levy on electronic transfers, the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) has promised to reimburse mobile money users who have been unfairly overcharged.
The reduction of the Electronic Transfer Levy (E-Levy) from 1.5 to 1 percent commenced on Wednesday, January 11, 2023.
The 2023 Budget and Economic Policy Statement, delivered on the floor of Parliament last year by Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta, disclosed the electronic transfer levy reduction.
A member of the E-levy Technical Committee GRA Opoku Afriyie Asante said in an interview with Citi News that a lot of measures have been put in place to address the difficulties posed by the revised levy.
“I would like to assure the general public that the Commissioner General is doing all that he can and if there are any system glitches the GRA would be available to reimburse if you are wrongfully deducted,” Mr. Afriyie Asante said.
Since the inception of the levy, it has failed to meet its revenue goals, and players in the telco industry have expressed concerns about how feasible it would be to operate a successful mobile money service while the levy is still in place.
In April 2022, telcos reported a loss of over 300,000 mobile money subscribers following the levy’s implementation.
Just before the E-levy went into effect in May 2022, the Summary of Economic and Financial data (May 2022), recorded that the number of active mobile money subscribers saw a decline from 18.6 million in April to 18.6 million from the 18.9 million recorded the previous month.
Furthermore, the mobile money industry lost 4,000 active agents, as their number declined to 454,000 in April from the previous month’s 458,000 which is also reflected in the value of transactions, which dropped by GH¢2.8billion within the period under discussion.