The Minister for Communications Ursula Owusu Ekuful has disclosed that the state has managed to make tax savings of 205.6 million cedis on Fraud Management following the introduction of the Common Platform.
Addressing Journalists in Accra, the Minister said the overall duration of the 5-year contract is expected to deliver tax savings of approximately GHS 795.9 million.
“This comes with a state-of-the-art Fraud Management System known as TELECOP. Through this, the CP originates over 150,000 international calls into Ghana every month to detect fraudulent SIMs automatically” she said.
The minister disclosed that the Common Platform is providing the Ghana Revenue Authority revenue assurances which includes “revenue to the government by top-ups, measurement of top-ups per operator by the CP and revenue to the operator measured by the CP (Consumption)”
“With this, the GRA is now able to verify the various revenue streams of the MNOs, plug revenue leakages and more accurately predict revenue trends from the sector for planning and policy formulation” she said.
On Mobile Money Monitoring, the Communications Minister said the Platform has reported an average monthly usage of GHS 29.1 Billion, 195.8 million transactions, with GHS 71 million generated by the Operators in transaction fees, with further breakdowns of transaction types for informed policy decision making.
According to the Minister the introduction of the Common Platform has uncovered that, prior to its introduction, GHS 300 million in taxes was lost from potential under declarations between 2015 to Q1 of 2017.
“An estimated GHS 470 million in taxes was saved between Q1 of 2017 to date as a result of the announcement of the implementation of the CP on March 8th, 2017 and its actual implementation to date. There would have been a potential loss of a total of GHS 1.5 billion through to the end of the CP contract, had the CP not been implemented” she said.
Source: Ghana/Starrfm.com.gh/103.5FM
