Ghanaians will accept E-Levy if they understand its benefits - Koku Anyidoho

Koku Anyidoho says communication around E-Levy not the best

Ghanaians accepted VAT because there was a lot of education on it, Koku Anyidoho

Over 91% of respondents do not support E-Levy, GhanaWeb Poll

The former general secretary of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Samuel Koku Anyidoho, has indicated Ghanaians will accept the E-Levy if they are properly educated on its benefits.

According to him, currently, a lot of people oppose the implementation of the levy because they do not understand its benefits and this is due to the government’s inability to sell the levy to Ghanaians, asaaseradio.com reported.

The former general secretary, therefore, urged government to increase its education on the rationale for the E-Levy in order to get more citizens on board.

“If you go back, Value Added Tax (VAT) when it was coming… it was the same turbulence – the lack of understanding of what VAT was going to do for the country. I don’t know but maybe they [government] are not communicating around the E-Levy very well."

“If they do it properly and they will get Ghanaians to understand that really there is a rationale and a reason for it,” he was quoted by asaaseradio.com.

An online poll conducted by GhanaWeb to ascertain whether Ghanaians support the implementation of the E-Levy has shown that over 91 percent of respondents do not support the passage of the E-Levy bill.

In all, 38,220 took part took part in the survey out of which 35,009 people representing over 91 percent of the respondents said they do not support the E-Levy.

However, 2938 people, representing over 7 percent of the respondents said they support the levy.

The government is currently conducting town hall meetings across the country to explain to Ghanaians the importance of the levy.

The government has indicated that E-Levy will be used for road construction, job creation and also to champion the government’s entrepreneurship agenda among others.