Investors seem to be responding to the hullabaloo surrounding the e-levy as the biggest telecommunication giant in the Ghana Stock market, MTN Ghana, suffers yet another loss on the penultimate day of the working week, Thursday, February 3, 2022.
This comes on the back of a statement made by the President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo that suggest that the passage of the e-levy is a done deal. The President stated that the government will pass the controversial electronic transaction levy (E-levy) despite opposing views from Ghanaians.
“…These are the efforts that we are now making which are being resisted by the opposition, but we will try and lose the gab. That is the reason it has become necessary for us to use these measures like this famous tax which has caused so much unnecessary disputation; nevertheless, we would pass it.”
Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo
Additionally, the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) in a letter, also directed its partners such as, the ARB Apex Bank to trigger processes for the collection of revenues from the e-levy bills.
The Minority Leader, Haruna Iddrisu, at a press conference, accused the President of using the court to reduce the number of seats being occupied by the National Democratic Congress (NDC) in Parliament in order to get the E-levy passed.
His comments came on the back of the Supreme Court placing injunction on one of its MPs – Hon. James Gyakye Quayson.
“The caucus’ attention has just been drawn to some efforts and attempts by the Nana Akufo-Addo /Bawumia power drunk autocratic regime to resort to intimidation and ominous desperate act to get the obnoxious insensitive E-levy before parliament passed.
“Having failed in many respect to get the loathe E-levy passed in the wake of popular national resistance led by the NDC gallant MPs of 137, the Nana Addo Dankwa government has now resorted to very crude and for all intents and purposes, democratically shameful, disgraceful tactics to attempt to reduce by all means possible necessary including foul, to reduce the numbers of NDC Minority of 137 hoping that that will aid their efforts to railroad their e-levy into law.”
Haruna Iddrisu
However, analysts suggested that the above statements and actions pointed to the fact that the e-levy will eventually be passed. As such, investors are beginning to respond and this resulted in the late selling pressure by the investors of MTN Ghana Stock.
MTN Loses
MTNGH closed its trading day (Thursday, February 3, 2022) at GHS1.08 per share on the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE), recording a 0.9% drop from its previous closing price of GHS1.09. MTN began the year 2022 with a share price of GHS1.11 but has since lost 2.7% off that price valuation, ranking it fifth on the GSE in terms of year-to-date performance.
On the previous trading day, Wednesday February 2, MTN stocks depreciated by 1.80 percent.
MTN Ghana continues to witness a lot of activities on the market as it remains the number one most traded stock on the Ghana Stock Exchange over the past three months (Nov 2, 2021 – Feb 3, 2022). MTNGH has traded a total volume of 87.1 million shares valued at GHS 100 million over the period, with an average of 1.38 million traded shares per session. A volume high of 19.6 million was achieved on January 4, for the same period.
Market Activity Marginally Improves
At the end of Thursday’s trading session on the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE), a total of 2,652,220 shares, corresponding to a market value of GHS 2,871,066.15, were traded. Compared with the previous GSE trading day (Wednesday, February 2), Thursday’s data showed 21% improvement in volume and 13% improvement in turnover.
MTN Ghana recorded the highest volume of 2.64 million traded shares, followed by Ecobank Transnational (10,455), GCB Bank (2,859) and CAL Bank (812).
Regarding the performance of GSE market indices, the benchmark GSE Composite Index (GSE-CI) shed 11.75 (-0.43%) points to close at 2,729.36 points, representing a week on week loss of 1.61%, a month on month loss of 0.47%, and an overall year-to-date loss of 2.15%.
The GSE Financial Stocks Index (GSE-FSI) however, maintained its value at 2,127.91 points, making it a weekly loss of 0.8%, a monthly loss of 1.11%, and a year-to-date loss of 1.11%.
The current market capitalization of the Ghana Stock Exchange stands at GHS 63.2 billion.
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