17.5% VAT on Banks

Until recently, there has been intense public outrage arising from misinformation to the effect that government has slapped a 17.5% VAT on all banking transactions.

Until the Ministry of Finance came out with a statement last week to clarify that the 17.5% VAT per the VAT law, Act 870 is for non-core financial services provided by the banks for a fee, such as data processing, legal, accounting, actuarial, notary and consulting services; the government had allowed the false information to fester for some time, creating uneasiness among Ghanaians. .

Even in the face of these hard facts, and for reasons best known to officialdom, the opposition and their media collaborators have been allowed to pollute the minds of Ghanaians such that it could have caused the collapse of the entire banking sector.

Indeed, prior to the Ministry of Finance’s clarification, some Ghanaians including the educated ones were threatening to withdraw their monies from the banks. Even after the clarification, sections of the public are still holding onto the false information.

This prompted the Managing Editor of the Insight newspaper, Kwesi Pratt Jnr to remark “Look at the unnecessary panic and the anxiety the business community has gone through; not just because of poor communication but clear inefficiency and lack of commitment to duties… This should not have happened…common sense has become a major problem for our leaders”.