MTN and AirtelTigo have agreed to reduce their person-to-person transfer fees on mobile money transactions by up to 25 percent.
According to a statement from the Ghana Chamber of Telecommunications, this came after engagements with stakeholders on the matter.
“We have had extensive deliberation with government on the need to lessen the impact on our consumers. We acknowledge the need to expand the tax base.”
“However, to reduce the overall impact of the new levy on consumers, MTN and AirtelTigo have agreed to a downward revision of their P2P (person to person transfer) fees by up to 25% depending on respective operator.”
“Each operator would notify their customers of the applicable revised rate when the e-levy bill is passed into law,” the statement added.
The operators in question are Airtel Mobile Commerce Ltd (AirtelTigo Money), Mobile Money Limited (MTN MoMo) and Vodafone Ghana Mobile Financial Services Limited (Vodafone Cash).
Vodafone currently has no charges on mobile money transfers.
The government has proposed to charge a levy of 1.75% on electronic financial transactions.
The levy will exempt daily transactions of a cumulative value of GH¢100 or less, per person.
In the budget, the recommended date for the levy is January 1, 2022.
According to the budget, up to 0.25 percentage points of the 1.5 percent e-transaction levy or 16.7 percent of the yield from the levy, should be used to support road infrastructure development.
Ten percent of the 0.25 percentage points, i.e. 1.67% of the yield from the levy, would be dedicated to the improvement in public transportation, including the purchase of buses.
The levy has sparked controversy because of its impact on mobile money transactions and poor Ghanaians that use it.
The Minority in Parliament has been fighting the levy ahead of the debate on the Bill in Parliament.
The government has said its analysis showed that the levy won’t affect 40 percent of Ghanaians.