For quite some time things have been happening in the Ghanaian economy. Last year the government decided to pass a law that charges each user on mobile transactions which surpasses 100 cedis in a day. At the time, the e-levy charge was 1.5%. In theory, if you transferred 100 cedis to someone you will have to pay a fee of 1 cedi 50 pesewas in addition. This figure doesn’t look like a big one right? Well yes. This is because it’s just 1 cedi 50 pesewas. But imagine you wanted to send someone 5000 cedis, this means you will have to pay a charge of 75 cedis.
This 75 levy charge is not the only thing you are required to pay as that amount is for the government. The telcos that were helping in your transaction also had a fee that was demanded to be paid each time you used it to make a transaction. So roughly at the end of the day, you could have been paying up to 100 cedis in charges. This angered a lot of people as the government was always selling the idea of a cashless system to us the citizens. We couldn’t get why you will want us to use a cashless system and then expect us to pay such a hefty fee for using it.
Fast forward to this year, they have decided to change the 1.5 percent to 1 percent. Even though it is smaller now I still think it’s unnecessary to charge us for using e-transaction. Even if you do wanna charge the figure shouldn’t be very huge. Even though it’s 1 percent now, people still feel it. Let’s look at a scenario.
If you send 100 cedis you will pay 1 cedi as e levy. Some of the telcos will charge you 0.5 pesewas for that 100 cedis charge. So now If you send 5000 Cedis you will have to pay 50 cedis as e-levy. This cuts down an amount of 25 Cedis from the usual 75 Cedis you were gonna pay. My question is what is the essence of this e-levy charge if you want the citizens to use a cashless system? Won’t these charges only drive people away from the cashless system?
Well, I think it will deter a lot of people from using the cashless system. When it was announced a lot of people in business had a lot to say as this was literally the fare one will take to the location he was sending the money.
The one percent was implemented recently, even though I still use elevy for most of my transactions I still think it’s wack that I have to pay a lot. Just recently I was sending money to someone and all the money was swallowed by transactions. The painful part is that the money was not very huge too.
The cover image was made on canva