The Minister for Communications Ursula Owusu Ekuful has disclosed that the state has accumulated an amount of GHS205.6 million in tax savings on fraud management following the introduction of the Common Platform(CP).
Addressing Journalists in Accra, the Minister said the overall duration of the 5-year contract is expected to deliver tax savings of approximately GHS795.9 million.
“This comes with a state-of-the-art Fraud Management System known as TELECOP. Through this, the Common Platform 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 include “revenue to the government by top-ups, measurement of top-ups per operator by the Common Platform and revenue to the operator measured by the Common Platform Consumption.”
“With this, the Ghana Revenue Authority 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 GHS29.1 billion, 195.8 million in transactions, with GHS71 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, GHS300 million in taxes was lost from potential under-declarations between 2015 to the first quarter of 2017.
“An estimated GHS 470 million in taxes was saved between the first quarter of 2017 to date as a result of the announcement of the implementation of the Common Platform 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 Common Platform contract, had the Common Platform not been implemented,” she said.
