The Communications Minister, Ursula Owusu-Ekuful says, the country has recovered ¢770 million that was lost through under-declarations of taxes between 2015 to date after KelniGVG built a Common Platform (CP) for all telecommunication companies.
She told Parliament that the implementation of CP helped government to detect the loss of about 470 million of the country’s taxes from 2015 to the first quarter of 2017 and some 300 million from the second quarter of 2017 to date.
The Minister insisted that had it not been for the introduction of the Platform, the country would have seen a potential loss of ¢1.5 billion through to the end of the KelniGVG contract in 2022.
“The Ministry of Communications decided to hand over the operations and maintenance of eGovernment Infrastructure to a private operator for greater efficiency and to commercialise the excess capacity on the network in a revenue sharing arrangement.
“The private partner is also expected to invest in the upgrade and expansion of the infrastructure,” she stated.
The Communications Minister was instructed to appear before Parliament today after dishonouring the invitation on three consecutive occasions. The Ningo Prampram MP, Samuel George had earlier on, posed some questions to the Minister on the $89 million deal meant to monitor revenue of mobilisation from the mobile telecommunication companies.
When asked if mobile telecommunications companies would be prosecuted, the communications minister said the details have been handed over to the National Communications Authority (NCA) and the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) for appropriate actions to be taken
She also revealed that $327.3 million in tax revenue has been saved since the KelniGVG contract was launched by setting up a robust fraud management system to detect the origin of international calls.
According to her, before the Common Platform ends in 2022, it will deliver savings to the tune of some $799.6 million.
The Minister further added that the KelniGVG contract saved the country an extra $1.1 million in charges relative to the sums payable for the same assignment by Afriwave and Subah.
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I’m Deborah Aba Narkoah. I’m an avid reader, writer and public speaker.
