The Chamber of Agribusiness Ghana has blamed the high cost of food prices on the Electronic Transaction Levy.

According to its Chief Executive Officer, Anthony Morrison, the implementation of the E-levy has increased the cost of aggregation along the agricultural value chain, hence, stakeholders at that stage are forced to increase food prices when the products get to the urban centres.

“Due to the rising cases of robbery attacks, most traders and aggregators keep their monies on their mobile money accounts when going for produce. Assuming an aggregator goes to the rural areas to get goods from different sources, mobile money transactions will be done between the trader and the different sources which come with charges per transaction”.

“So when the aggregator returns to the urban centres, they add the accumulated E-levy charges to the price on the market. This then leads to increased food prices,” he said.

Mr. Morrison therefore called on government to exclude the rural economy from paying the electronic transaction levy.

“When one is buying from the agro-input dealers, one pays taxes on fertiliser, weedicides, and pesticides, among others that equally impact the prices of food. Adding the electronic transaction levy burdens the sector even more; that is why we are calling on government to take e-levy out of the agric sector and enable the rural economy to freely participate in digitalisation,” he urged.

GIZ in partnership with the European Union and the Ministry of Trade and Industry organised the Entrepreneurial Knowledge Forum to create a platform for Small and Medium Enterprises to network with policymakers under the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) and highlight the importance of digitalisation.

Economist, Professor Godfred Bokpin presented his research findings on AfCFTA, Digital Trade and E-Commerce at the forum.

According to him, Ghana is losing out on the pact “in terms of digital trade, e-commerce etc. compared to other countries. Our businesses are doing their best but they need a lot of external support from government, other regulatory institutions including the associations.”

Professor Bokpin called for more sensitisation programmes to help all understand the benefits of AfCFTA and how they can take advantage of it.

“Again, under the guided trade initiative, other countries are focusing on Ghana and how they can quickly infiltrate the market. Ghanaians should be equally interested in how the private sector can be empowered to take advantage of AfCFTA. AfCFTA aims to send goods across borders so if we’re not doing that, we’re not optimising our participation from the area.”

Apart from the urban and periurban areas, which are fairly aware of the AfCFTA and the protocols, the knowledge level is very low in other areas. Hence it is important for workshops tailor-made to suit those in rural areas,” he said.