A former Finance Minister, Dr Kwabena Duffuor has advised the government to scrap the Electronic Transfer Levy (E-Levy) if it is not raking in the needed revenue.

According to him, there is no need for the government to keep such a tax. 

In an interview with Citi TV on Wednesday, Dr Duffuor insisted that the controversial levy should be abolished immediately if it has become a nuisance tax. 

“We need to ask ourselves, are we getting enough from it? If we are not getting enough from it, then it is a nuisance tax, and we should scrap it.”

Meanwhile, data from the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) indicates that the Electronic Transfer Levy (E-Levy) implemented in May 2022 raked in ¢861.47 million as of March 2023.

The controversial levy in the first year of implementation at a rate of 1.5% accrued ¢614.57 million.

However, in the first three months of 2023, the levy brought in ¢246.9 million for the state.

According to the data from the GRA, the E-levy registered ¢53.58 million in revenue in the first month (May 2022) of its implementation.

It further shot up to ¢59.23 million in June 2022 and consistently rose in July 2022 (¢65.0 7million), August 2022 (¢71.29 million), September 2022 (¢78.95 million), October 2022 (¢85.73 million) and November 2022 (¢93.3 million) respectively.

The E-levy inflows breached the one hundred million cedis mark to record ¢106.79 million in December 2022.

It however began the year recording lower revenue than in December 2022. This was after the rate was revised to 1%, from 1.5%.

E-levy records ¢246.9 million in quarter 1, 2023

In January 2023, the E-Levy inflow was estimated at ¢85.93 million.

It subsequently fell to ¢73.99 million, about 13.9% decline in February 2023.

However, in March 2023, the E-Levy amounted to ¢86.98 million, bringing the total collections in the first quarter of 2023 to ¢246.9 million.

The government had set a target of about ¢7 billion for E-levy in 2022. But the delay in implementation compelled it to review the target several times to about ¢800 million in the first month of implementation.

Despite the uproar about the implementation of the E-Levy, total mobile money transactions exceeded ¢1 trillion in 2022.