Ghana’s mobile phone subscribers will be paying a flat rate of 19 US cents a minute for all inbound international calls that they receive if an order by the Ministry of Communications comes into force.

A Ghana News Agency report has said when the order is enforced with strict monitoring by a Haitian company, Global Voices Group (GVG) SA, and the National Communications Authority (NCA) the country would generate at $60 million a year in the form of taxes on the inbound international calls. Currently there are five mobile phone companies operating in Ghana, a sixth is yet to start operations, and they altogether have over 15 million subscribers among Ghana’s about 22 million population.

Sometime this year, the Minister of Communications, Haruna Iddrisu had said that in March 2010 alone, government lost $5.8 million in revenue due to fraudulent termination of international calls coming into Ghana.

He told journalists that international calls are being terminated on mobile phones as local cell phone numbers. He said this fraud is being perpetrated by unidentified persons, adding that so far about 3,000 landline and cell phone numbers have been identified as being used for that fraud.

Iddrisu said the Ministry has been able to ascertain the actual quantum of the losses through the help of GVG.

To implement this new regulation, call signals would have to go through the Intelligence Signal Management System (ISMS) equipment and that could affect the quality of the call at the receiving end, the mobile phone companies in Ghana have all said.

By Emmanuel K. Dogbevi