Afriwave says it will save Ghana GH¢4m monthly after partnership
Afriwave Telecom says it has almost completed a partnership deal with the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) to provide data for tax revenue assurance services at no cost to guarantee GH¢4 million savings every month.
The company, licensed to oversee the Interconnect Clearinghouse (ICH), announced that the move formed part of its corporate social responsibility initiatives.
Mr Donald Gwira, the Director of Corporate Affairs at Afriwave, was quoted in a statement copied to the Ghana News Agency on Wednesday as saying: “To calculate the net revenue of operators in the telecoms sector, Afriwave will need to subtract Value Added Tax (VAT), National Health Insurance Levy (NHIL) and Communication Service Tax (CST) from gross revenue.
“This means there is a VAT, NHIL and CST information which we are willing, through the National Communications Authority, to make available to the GRA.
“It will also be possible to make certain subscriber information available to organisations like the Statistical Service, also at no cost where the law permits”.
“In effect, since one of the deliverables under the ICH is traffic monitoring and revenue verification for the NCA, Afriwave has the capacity for the information required by the GRA for their revenue monitoring activities,” he said.
Mr Gwira said the company “will do this service that initially costs the tax payer more than GH¢4 million a month as our contribution to national development.”
Afriwave, a wholly Ghanaian owned company, has since May 2016, launched rigorous measures for a successful take-off of international wholesale carriers which ought to translate into creating additional employment opportunities.
Afriwave Telecom Company was established in 1998 to provide a full range of telecommunication services including equipment supplies, installation contractors, telecom consultants, manufacturers’ representatives and value added network services targeting private and public sector clients.
In February 2015, Afriwave was awarded Ghana’s first ICH license after a competitive bidding process against four other applicants.
The company is authorised under the license to provide a common and independent mechanism for monitoring, routing, billing and settlement of local and international interconnect traffic for all existing and future telecommunications operators in the country.
After starting test operations early this year, Afriwave has, in partnership with SIGOS, a worldwide leader in real time SIM Box detection, successfully detected and blocked over 300,000 unauthorised attempts at illegal international call bypasses.
Source: GNA