The Minister for Communication and Digitalization, Mrs Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, has appealed to Ghanaians to support the e-levy proposed by the government to fund development projects.
The e-levy, she said, would reduce the pressure on the government seeking funding from foreign partners for the nation’s development.
Mrs Owusu-Ekuful, who made the appeal at the Government Town Hall Meeting at Koforidua to sensitize Ghanaians on the importance of the levy to national development, said failure to generate funds internally means over-reliance on development partners.
She said the time has come for Ghana to look for possible means of funding its development through its resources.
The minister said the country needed to begin funding its development and stop the excessive borrowing to fund its development projects.
Comparing the levy to digital taxes in other countries, she said citizens of the United Kingdom (UK) pay so much as digital tax for their government yet Ghana borrows from the UK to fund its development.
“Here what the government is asking us to pay is fairly modest when compared to what other governments are charging their citizens as digital taxes, we are not paying the requisite taxes that we should,” she said
On his part, the Minister for Finance, Mr Ken Ofori-Atta said the levy would rope in people who are outside the tax net to raise more revenue for national development.
He said the 2021 Population and Housing Census revealed that only 2.4 million Ghanaians were paying taxes out of a population of 30.8 million, adding that the levy would help the country honour its debts to her development partners to achieve debt sustainability.
The e-levy is a new tax on fundamental transactions related to digital payments platforms.
