A leading member of the opposition National Democratic Congress, Lawyer Edudzie Tamakloe, has accused the Minister for finance of putting a spin on sections of the party’s 2020 manifesto.
Following the resistance of the minority side against governments proposed 1.5% Electronic Transactions Levy, the Finance Minister, Ken Ofori Atta speaking at a townhall meeting on Tuesday questioned the honesty of the NDC in opposing the E-Levy which is currently a bill before parliament.
According to the finance minister, the NDC on page 99 of its manifesto had indicated plans of implementing a similar tax policy if they had won the 2020 elections.
But speaking on the Tuesday, February 22, 2022, of Metro TV’s Good Morning Ghana, Lawyer Edudzie Tamakloe described the finance minister’s claims as a rather spirited spin.
According to him, what the NDC had sought to do was to ensure a uniformed charge rate for electronic transactions across the various platforms available in the country and not to impose a tax on electronic transactions as the current administration is seeking to do.
In any case, like government of Ghana is talking about today; it’s a levy, it’s not a fee. The networks provide a platform that allows them to charge a fee and there is no uniformity. Now the NDC had indicated that with the benefit of power… we wanted to provide a uniformed platform that will ensure greater inclusion without more.
“Now we have a situation where minister Ken Ofori-Atta has completely collapsed the Ghanaian economy and the only way out for him is to basically confuse Ghanaians with this spin on what the NDC promised on page 99 of the 2020 manifesto. I expected so much from Mr Ken Ofori Atta, I mean this is the lowest,” he stated.
The ruling party has pointed to item C under Financial Inclusion and Electronic Payments (FINTECH) of the NDC’s manifesto which states that the next NDC government will “introduce a uniform transaction fee policy to guide electronic payments industry” to back allegations of bad faith against the NDC’s opposition to the E-Levy
Source: Mynewsghana
About The Author
