The former minister of finance and governor of the Bank of Ghana, Dr. Kwabena Duffuor, has said the New Patriotic Party (NPP) government has forced the electronic transfer levy on Ghanaians because they turned a deaf ear to wise counsel from economic experts like himself.
Lamenting on his Facebook wall the morning after the e-levy was passed, he said, “The NPP has progressed in their passage of the unpopular e-levy bill. May it be on record that despite the hardship of the Ghanaian people and disaffection for the e-levy, the NPP ignored these concerns and added to our tax burden.”
Many Ghanaians are expressing anger against the NPP government for the passage of the electronic transfer levy on Tuesday, March 29, in parliament despite lack of popular support from the general public, a boycott from the opposition as well as warnings from economic experts.
Just like many well-meaning and experienced economic experts, Dr. Kwabena Duffuor has in the past, offered several suggestions of alternatives to the unpopular E-levy.
Speaking on Tuesday, February 21, 2021, on starr FM ahead of the IFS’s forum on domestic revenue mobilization mode, Dr. Duffuor said, “currently in Ghana, foreign interests are largely the main beneficiaries of our extractive sector at the expense of Ghanaians who benefit from very little revenue from our natural resources”.
“We must start looking at the sector we have ignored over the years – the extractive sector. A well-managed natural resources centre has emerged as the safest route to prosperity in many developed countries such as the USA, UK and Germany. We must go back and renegotiate our mining agreements for higher revenues rather than stick to colonial agreements to the detriment of our people,” he added.
As a man who once headed the central bank of Ghana and ran the finance ministry, perhaps the NPP government could have made use of his views on how to proceed with its revenue mobilisation efforts as opposed to taxing an electronic mode of payment.
However, like other contrary views from other non-NPP economic experts, the former BoG governor’s views were not taken into consideration.
