E-Levy: Sam George Lists Five Technical Reasons May 1 Implementation Will Be Impossible

• Sam George has listed six reasons the implementation of the controversial tax cannot begin next month as has been announced
• According to the MP, critical infrastructure is not ready and there are legal issues about the government wants to run the cloud system
• He also said there should be a stress test of the E-Levy system months before implementation starts but that has not happened

A ranking member on Parliament's Communication Committee, Sam Nartey George, has listed five technical reasons to back his view that implementing the E-Levy from May 1 is impossible.

The Member of Parliament for Ningo Prampram said there are technical and legal hurdles that government does not seem capable of dealing with by next month.

In a tweet earlier this month to silence critics of similar comments on Citi TV, the opposition legislator said he is convinced that there would be a "catastrophe of an abysmal implementation."

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He listed the following five reasons to back his doubt that the implementation of the E-Levy next month is unlikely:

1. Running a national financial system on a serverless cloud system outside the country is illegal per our laws.

2. The $40million price tag for a new monitoring platform is hyperinflated and a criminal enterprise.

3. The architecture for the system is still not complete and has not been given to the industry players (MNOs and EMIs) less than 10 days to the start of the project.

4. No stress test has been carried out on the intended system to ascertain the infrastructure's robustness.

5. Even the sponsors of this system admit that there would be significant downtimes and have asked that as a contingency, all transactions should be charged the 1.5% and reversals done subsequently.

"You may not like Sam George but ask yourself why the shareholding structure of ExpressPay was changed prior to this contract and whose interests the new guys hold.

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"Ask yourself if your country should be paying $40million for a system that we already have at NCA? Ask yourself why less than 10 days to implementation, APIs needed for the reversals have still not been handed over to the industry partners," he stated.

E-Levy Implementation To Start In May After Akufo-Addo Signs Bill Into Law

President Nana Akufo-Addo quickly signed the controversial E-Levy into law on March 31, 2022, paving the way for the start of its implementation in May.

In Ghana, a bill passed in Parliament can only become law after the president signs to give it official approval.

Minister of Finance, Ken Ofori-Atta, had said earlier that the Electronic Transfer Levy implementation would start at the beginning of next month.

Source: YEN.com.gh