ICH revenue assurance for NCA not same as GRA tax assurance - Afriwave

Communications Director of Afriwave Telecoms Ghana Limited, Donald Gwira has debunked
allegations that the company is being paid by the National Communications Authority
(NCA) for a job meant for the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) to do.

A local newspaper reported recently that NCA has paid Afriwave some GHC4.5million for
revenue assurance for the NCA, saying that the payment was not justified because, by
law, revenue assurance was under the purview of GRA and not NCA.

But Donald Gwira told Adom News the new Electronic Communication (Amendment) Act, Act
910, 2016, which authorizes the operations of the Interconnect Clearinghouse (ICH)
clearly stated the ICH (Afriwave) cannot do tax revenue assurance for GRA, which is
different from the revenue assurance as per its license it is doing currently doing
for NCA.

According to him, by law, NCA is supposed to charge telcos a number of fees based on
the volume of traffic they generate, and those charges by the NCA, had in the past
been based on records generated by the telcos themselves.

Gwira said the NCA therefore contracted Afriwave to independently generate those
records for them to be able to issue invoices to each telco based on independently
generated records.

"That is the kind of revenue assurance we are doing for the NCA as opposed to tax
revenue assurance which the law (Act 910) bars the ICH (Afriwave) from doing," he
said.

He explained that the ICH is set up to automatically monitor traffic flow on telcos
international gateways and on the interconnect platform in real time, and that data
can be used by the NCA for revenue assurance on those platforms.

GRA reject Afriwave's free service

Gwira also noted that the work of Afriwave automatically generates free data for GRA
to be able to determine domestic tax revenue from the telcos but GRA chose to still
award a contract to another company, and pay for the service.

Afriwave wrote a letter dated May 3, 2016 to GRA, offering to give them free data for
them to do domestic tax revenue assurance on the telcos activities.

That offer meant GRA did not need to pay for tax revenue assurance on the activities
of telcos, but GRA chose to renew the contract of another company (Subah) just for
the state to keep paying for something Afriwave is offering for free.

Adom News is reliably informed that GRA renewed the Subah contract without recourse
to the Attorney-General.

It would also be recalled that the same GRA allegedly inserted a termination clause
in a contract with same Subah on the blind side of the A-G, which meant if Subah's
contract was terminated, the state was going to pay huge moneys to Subah.

Meanwhile, a few years back, Subah and GRA were in the news for some GHC74million the
latter paid to the former allegedly for no work done. Till date, GRA has not been
able to explain to the public how Subah earned money from the state when there is no
record of Subah having done the work for which it was paid.

On the contrary, NCA made it clear from day one that until 2018, it will pay Afriwave
for NCA's revenue assurance, for anti-Simboxing and for the actual interconnect
management. That information has not been hidden from the public, and the law, as it
stands, is not opposed to any of those arrangements.

Telcos still argue that the work of ICH will burden consumers with extra charge, but
the NCA has explained over and again that it will bear all interconnect cost till
2018, when the interconnect rate will be due for review and Afriwave will naturally
make its earning without any undue cost burden on consumers.

Meanwhile, just when the law was passed for ICH to start operation, NCA announced
that a cushion the public from any cost burden until the said date.