The Interior Minister, Ambrose Dery, has dismissed claims made by the Minority in Parliament that the New Patriotic Party (NPP) will lose the next general election if the Electronic Transaction Levy (E-Levy) is passed by Parliament.

According to him, the sole aim of the Minority is to defeat the NPP in the next election. He therefore questioned why the Minority is wasting what he describes as the "golden opportunity presented to them".

''The same people who tell us that it is not a good tax are telling us that if we implement the tax we will lose the next election.

“We say approve so that we lose the next election. In any case that is why you are there. You want us to lose,'' he stated.

Addressing participants at the Townhall meeting in the Upper West regional capital, he said that the Minority Caucus has not been consistent with their arguments and has continually been shifting the goal post.

The Interior Minister noted that the government for the last five years has invested heavily in security services resulting in the country being safe.

He recalled with nostalgia in 2018 when the Upper West Region particularly, Wa, was infested with criminals and their elements; making Wa and its environs unsafe.

He stated that Wa and the Upper West Region is now safer because of the investment in security.

He averred that the whole sub-region is in turmoil but Ghana is investing money to make sure that the people are safe.

''No country outside will invest money on our security. So what do we do, we have to pay taxes.

''If you have your family and you can't take care of them, we need to come together to contribute. What we have come to tell you is that this tax is a reasonable tax. It is tax that is going to help us to continue what we are doing,'' he added.

On his part, the Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta who was the lead speaker at the townhall meeting re-echoed the need for all Ghanaians to rally behind the implementation of the new tax policy, which will help mobilise more revenue for the country.

According to him, once the levy becomes effective, government will have the ability to roll out more developmental initiatives across the country.

“E-levy as small as you might think, it will be GH¢7 billion, starting this year if we had started early. So we could pay your District Assembly Common Fund but your opposition is sitting on it,” he said.

“If I look at Upper West where we have 11 constituencies, we have 340,000 people being youth with serious issues of unemployment with eight of our MPs coming from the NDC. What reason will they have to support an e-levy which is looking at about GH¢10 billion intervention called YouStart, which is also looking at getting to the heart of employment,” he added.

Upper West Regional Minister, Dr. Hafiz Bin Salih called on the people of the region to support the course of the government to enable them to go through with the passage of the e-levy.

He noted that the people of the Upper West Region have benefitted enormously from government programmes and projects, hence the need to embrace the e-levy to enable the government do more.