An aggregator in the Savlugu District in the Northern Region, Madam Rhoda Bimbali, has disclosed that the passing of e-levy will increase the cost of food production, thereby impeding the livelihood of rural farmers; and affecting the purchasing power of aggregators and consumers alike.
Madam Bimbali revealed that most suppliers of farm inputs carry out transactions electronically. As such with the extra charges from the e-levy, farmers would be burdened to farm at a higher production cost. She noted again that the high production cost would reflect foodstuff prices in the market. This will be an unending cycle of compounding costs that will affect everybody along the agricultural value chain.
Madam Bimbali recalled most rural farmers had to be convinced before accepting Momo payments from aggregators some years back. However, the passage of e-levy will make these farmers go back to their old ways of accepting cash payments only, which is risky for aggregators as they have to carry money along, she stated.
Farmers to go back to their cash-receiving-system, aggregators’ lives at risk
Even before the E-levy, it wasn’t easy to convince farmers to accept mobile money as a mode of payment because of the charges it came with. Now that there is some form of tax payment on mobile money transactions, it will deter them from accepting momo payments from aggregators completely. These are some of the challenges we are going to face, Madam Bimbali stressed. People will be forced to carry money with them, making them prone to robbers, which will go a long way to affect the food market in the cities, she lamented.
Over the period, aggregators have facilitated their business with Momo transactions because there is no protection from the security services while carrying a lot of money from one village to another, paying for over 30 bags to aggregate enough food to convey to the major cities.
The use of Momo has already affected their daily transactions because of the charges it came with but now the extra charges from the e-levy will compound the already existing Momo charges, making it difficult to purchase the quantities of foodstuff they would aggregate on regular basis.
Most agri-stakeholders before the passage of the e-levy shared their thoughts on how badly farmers will be affected as well as the entire agricultural value chain.
For instance, the Chamber of Agribusiness President, Mr. Anthony Morrison, revealed in an earlier interview that the passage of the e-levy would prohibit food on the market.
“E-levy will prohibit the food availability in the market; we will not be able to buy enough food from the rural area, consumers will face some challenges. The other challenge is people who stay in Accra and send money to farmers through mobile money transactions to send them farm products would not be able to do so again because rural folks stand against mobile money transactions.”
Anthony Morrison
Farmer’s income at stake at e-levy passage
In adding to the conversation, some agri-experts have opined that the passage of the e-levy will affect farmers significantly because they stand the chance of being the most vulnerable along the value chain.
Food produced by farmers falls under ‘competitive goods’, which means their prices are determined by external factors rather than the farmers themselves. Thus, after growing at a higher cost, farmers would be at the mercy of aggregators to sell their produce at a price inconvenient because they had never had a choice in their produce sales.
These will keep on impeding the farmer’s livelihoods, thereby making them worse off than before, some agri-experts revealed.
Despite the people of Ghana decrying the e-levy passage, it looks like it has come to stay as the Deputy Finance Minister, Mr. Kumah, indicated that the numerous challenges resulting from the e-levy passage will be resolved.
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