The Member of Parliament for the Dormaa East Constituency, Paul Twum Barimah, has indicated that the Electronic Transaction Levy, popularly known as E-Levy will boost Ghana’s COVID-19 economic recovery.

According to Mr. Twum Barimah,  the e-levy is a  tax measure introduced by the government in the 2022 Budget and Economic Policy on basic transactions related to digital payments and electronic platform transactions, which includes financial technologies platform (FINTECH), E-Banking or online banking and mobile money payment.

Mr. Twum Barimah explained that aside Ghana, other countries have also introduced or reviewed their taxes to help their economies recover from the impact of COVID-19 trauma.

“Countries like Argentina, Peru hiked taxes on their wealthy and high income earners. Indonesia extended its Value Added Tax to digital companies to address COVID-19 expenditure. Saudi Arabia, for instance tripled its Value Added Tax rate to enable it maximise revenue to sustain its economy”.

He also indicated that revenues from the e-levy will support government’s road constructions, employment for the youth programmes and support the infrastructure of digital services, as well as entrepreneurship.

“Revenue from the e-levy is expected to be mobilised by the government, through the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA), that shall collect the E-Levy with the telecommunication agencies, financial technologies and financial institutions.”

The 1.75% e-levy consists of All Person to Person (P2P) mobile transactions ( that is sending of funds to another account, payment for goods and services, payment of utilities, and Business to Business (B2B) mobile transactions. All points of service (POS)/merchant payments; and all inward remittances (to be borne by the recipient) are also included.

However, transfers from personal wallets to bank accounts and vice versa will not attract this levy.