A member of the NPP communications team, Solomon Assante has said that the Domestic Debt Exchange Program (DDEP), would have been an option for the government to consider if the electronic transactions levy didn’t face stiff opposition.
According to him, he believes the bondholders who had resisted against the E-levy will regret doing so- stressing that if the opportunity is presented for them to choose between the E-levy and the Domestic Debt Restructuring Program, he’s sure they will choose E-levy than the touching of their bonds.
“Government shouldn’t always be blamed for some of these things. Although what we are facing now as a country is largely caused by external factors, there are some internal factors to be blamed and Ghanaians must be blamed too. We should be threading cautiously as a country and be careful with the kind of things we play politics with, especially things that touches the very fiber of the country’s progress”, he explained to Kwaku Dawuro on Movement in the morning show on Wontumi radio/Movement TV.
Adding that the country wouldn’t had reached this stage if E-levy was accepted at the rate it was earlier pegged at.
“We were equally affected by the global crisis like any other country and as part of measures to get out of this economic turbulence, government decided to introduce this tax, yet the citizenry followed the minority to resist against it- the Domestic Debt Exchange Program wouldn’t have been an option now”, he stressed.
He however, urged that the Government consult stakeholders involved in every policy it intends to introduce. because the stiff resistance against the E-levy was because government failed to consult and educate the public on the tax.
“The DDEP could have been accepted, if government had earlier consulted the people involved. This is a shortfall we need to deal with as a party”, he concluded.