Afriwave Telecom says it is close to agreeing a partnership deal with the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) to provide data for tax revenue assurance services.

The telecommunication service company was recently licenced by the National Communications Authority (NCA) to oversee the Interconnect Clearing House (ICH), and announced in Accra that the service will be provided at no cost as part of its Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives.

The initiative is informed by the company’s strength, which according to Director of Corporate Affairs at Afriwave Donald Gwira is “to calculate the net revenue of operators in the telecoms sector. Afriwave will need to subtract VAT, NHIL and CST from gross revenue; meaning there is VAT, NHIL and CST information that we are willing through the NCA to make available to the GRA. It will also be possible to make certain subscriber information available to organisations like The Ghana 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 says it has the capacity to supply the information required by the GRA for its revenue monitoring activities.

Mr. Gwira said Afriwave will offer this service that normally costs the taxpayer more than GH?4million a month as its contribution to national development.

He added that Afriwave has since going live in May 2016 put in place practical steps for a successful take-off of International Wholesale Carriers, which should translate into creating additional employment opportunities for Ghanaians.

Since it started test operations a couple of months ago, Afriwave has in partnership with SIGOS - the worldwide leader in real-time SIM Box detection - successfully detected and blocked over 300,000 unauthorised attempts at illegal international call bypass.