Trade Practitioner and AfCFTA expert, Louis Yaw Afful has opined that continental trading under the Free trade agreement would not be derailed by the introduction of the e-levy policy by government.
He explained that “the continental free trade area is not barring any country from doing something like that. In fact, Kenya is one of the countries that started this. These are internal means of generating of funds and does not infringe upon the activity of another member state by doing that.”
Mr. Afful however did say that “the only way it would have a negative impact on AfCFTA is where under the services sector such as telecommunications, different rates are applied for a Ghana-originating service provider and one from a different African country. That won’t be a fair practice under AfCFTA.”
Speaking on Eye on Port, the AfCFTA expert indicated that the e-levy policy has been introduced by government as an innovative way of widening the tax net.
He said “because most of the trading in Ghana has been in the informal sector and government had to find ways to generate much internally. At the continental trading level this would not affect digital trading because the transaction is internal and not done at the border.”
Louis Yaw Afful, who is the Executive Director of the AfCFTA Policy Network (APN) said this move also aligns with the ambition for party states to increase internally generated revenues, as countries are to work towards 90percent tariff liberalization.
He predicted that many countries participating in the AfCFTA would follow suit.