The MTN chief executive officer, Mr. Wim Vanhellepute has said the reduction of the Mobile Money tax from 1 percent to 0.5 percent, if implemented, will increase the mobile money transactions, which had dropped by 30%.
Mr. Vanhellepute said during the donation of hospital equipment by the company to Busia health center IV in Busia town council in Mbale district on Friday, that since July, when the government effected 1% percent tax, the customers had resorted to transferring their money in the traditional way.
“So now, we believe that mobile money transactions will be coming back to its volumes because as soon as the 1 percent was implemented in July, serious reductions in volumes of transactions were felt because the customers had gone back to transferring their money in the old way,” he said.
Recently, the MPs voted in favor of the Excise Duty Amendment Bill, which provided for the reduction of mobile money tax to 0.5 percent.
Mr. Vanhellepute applauded the reduction and said their business will normalize if the President assents to the bill and it comes into effect.
“We think that costumers will come back to the convenient and safe way of transferring money, which is mobile money,” he said, adding that the public should not reject tax completely because it’s one of the sources of local revenue.
‘Nobody is in favor of increasing mobile money taxes’
“Everybody would like to see taxes reduced, even myself, nobody is in favor of increasing taxes but the same time taxes are useful because it allows the government to redistribute resources and there are also budgets to be met,” he said.
On the donation of hospital equipment, Mr. Vanhellepute said this was part of the company’s initiatives of supporting access to better health.
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