Making every problem an opportunity for cronyism should stop – Kofi Bentil slams govt over E-levy

Minority in a standoff with the government over 2022 budget policies

Kofi Bentil believes GHC10 million allocated for Keta Sea Defense feasibility could as well be used to solve the Keta situation

The government's argument in defence of E-levy suggests the economy has been mismanaged, says

Read full articletarget='_blank' href='/GhanaHomePage/people/person.php?ID=5428'>Kofi Bentil

The Vice President of IMANI Africa, Kofi Bentil, has slammed the government over some policies contained in the 2022 budget and economic policy.

In a post shared on his Facebook page and sighted by GhanaWeb, Mr Bentil notes that the government's argument in support of the controversial Electronic Transactions Levy (E-levy) suggests that they have mismanaged the economy and the only means to salvage the situation is the imposition of the new tax policy.

"The government communication in support of e-levy seems to suggest that the economy has been mismanaged, and without e-levy, we will crash into IMF! Not so? Please clarify," he noted.

On the Keta Sea Defense project in which the government has allocated some GHC10 million to conduct feasibility studies on its construction, Mr Bentil said the government could go ahead and solve the problem faced by the people of Keta instead of allocating such a significant amount for feasibility studies alone.

"Instead of using 10m to study the obvious problem at Keta, why don't you just use it to start solving the problem. Anyway, how much land are we losing, and how much will it cost to purchase that size of land? Note that we've spent over $50 million on this issue with little result. We could have purchased new land with that," he argued.

On the E-levy, he added that the government has no justifiable reason to budget GHC241 million just for monitoring purposes.

According to him, "there is no good reason to use 241m to monitor e-levy you might as well use that to support the budget and scrap the E-levy. I insist that e-levy doesn't need any special monitoring!! If needed, then GRA can do it. It's already in a very well structured and formalized system," he stated in the post.

In his assessment, Kofi Bentil stated that the government's policies in addressing some problems through the budget come off as an "approach of making every problem an opportunity for cronyism", which he noted, "should stop."

The government of Ghana, from 2022, intends to impose a 1.75% levy on all electronic transactions.

The policy contained in the 2022 budget has been rejected by the opposition, who have been engaged in a standoff with the ruling government over some policies contained in the budget.