Since the E-Levy went into effect in May of this year, the majority of Ghanaians are claimed to have modified how they behave while sending money electronically.
A study conducted by the IMANI Center for Policy and Education in partnership with the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) found that 83% of the population felt compelled to do so in order to adapt to the restrictions the aforementioned levy placed on their ability to support themselves.
These were among the research’s conclusions regarding the impact of the new tax imposed on people in an effort to increase government income.
The IMANI Digital Financial Services Research Project examined how the 1.5 percent tax affected people’s coping skills.
“To assess the impact of the e-levy on the use of digital financial services, we first assessed how often people use digital financial services accounts (such as mobile money) in a typical week and then asked further questions on how it has affected the volume of mobile money transactions they make.”
“Of this number, about 47% indicated that they had reduced the number of mobile money transactions by about 51% to 100%,”
“Another 25% indicated that they had reduced their transactions by about 10% to 50%. Only about 1.6% of respondents indicated that their transaction volumes have stayed or increased their volume.”
The June 22 report also found that “about 31% of respondents indicated that they make between 1-2, 3-5 or more than five transfers per week.”
