THE government yesterday announced a 30 per cent reduction of mobile money transactions levies in response to public outcry over the new charges.
The Minister for Finance and Planning Dr Mwigulu Nchemba has already signed amendments of regulations for the mobile money transaction levies that will be officially announced today.
A statement issued by the Ministry’s Head of Communications Mr Ben Mwaipaja revealed that the government has reached an agreement telecommunication companies to lower their charges.
“The telecommunications companies have also reduced their withdrawal charges from other telecom operators by 10 per cent,” read part of the statement.
The cut in mobile money levies has come in response to the directives by President Samia Suluhu Hassan, who on July 19th this year, instructed the Finance and Planning Ministry together with the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology to revisit the charges and work on it accordingly.
Due to this, Dr Nchemba together with the Minister for Communications and Information Technology Dr Faustine Ndugulile started to work on the directives with immediate effect.
In the first four weeks since the government introduced the new levies, it had managed to fetch 48.4bn/- with 37bn/- disbursed for the construction of 150 health centres.
Dr Nchemba told journalists in Dar es Salaam recently that an additional 7bn/- was in a pipeline to be transferred to the Presidents’ Office Regional Administration and Local Government (PORALG) Ministry to finance the construction of 560 classrooms.
The construction of the classrooms will help to accommodate an increased number of pupils and students in primary and secondary schools in the next academic year.
According to Dr Nchemba, 22.5bn/- has already been sent to the PORALG for the construction of 90 health centres, the ministry was processing transactions of an additional 15bn/- for construction of the health facilities,” he said.
Speaking recently in Mpanda District, Katavi Region, Prime Minister Kassim Majaliwa said a total of 250m/- has been distributed to each project to be implemented in the needy Local Government Authorities (LGAs) for the commencement of the projects that aims at improving provision of health services in remote areas.
He assured that the government would supervise the spending of the money for it to deliver the intended purpose, and that no single cent would be embezzled.
The PM said the government is implementing a strategy that will provide LGAs with enough health centres, as part of its continued efforts to upgrade health services delivery across the country.
In another development, Dr Nchemba urged Tanzanians to keep on paying tax, since the collections are meant to be spent on improving provision of social services.
Speaking of the 100/- levy that has been added to petroleum products, the minister said a total of 24bn/- were collected in July, this year.
“And, for this month (August), we are estimating to have collected over 20bn/-, this money is meant to improve road networks being maintained by the Tanzania Rural Roads Agency (Tarura),” he noted.
In June, the government amended the Electronic and Postal Communication Act (CAP 306) by imposing a ‘patriotic levy’ on all mobile money transactions, depending on the amount sent and withdrawn.
It expects to raise 1.254tri/- from the levies to finance the 36.68tri/- budget for the 2021/22 financial year, with the government targeting to inject more funds towards financing rural development projects and improve social service delivery.
But the new charges sparked outrage from citizens over rising costs of financial transactions. The government pledged to work on the public concern with President Samia directing responsible ministers to address the challenge.