CEDI REDENOMINATION

With just days to go for the much talked about redenomination of the local currency (the Cedi), dailyEXPRESS’ attention has been drawn to what a caller to our offices described as “a negation of the Bank of Ghana’s Public Education Campaign so far” by cellular network service providers, MTN-Areeba.

MTN-Areeba has in newspaper advertisements running for several weeks introduced a redenomination formula that is alien and has led to confusion in the minds of not only subscribers but the general public who have been trying to understand the redenominated currencies in the advert.

In the said advertisements, MTN-Areeba says the cost of a call within its network, which is currently ¢1,440 will become GH¢ 0.1440 after July 1. It goes further to convert ¢1,450 which is the cost of a call from an Areeba network to other networks to GH¢ 0.1450.

Our further enquiries revealed that the Bank of Ghana has not and will not be printing any currencies in the denominations mentioned in the MTN-Areeba advertisements.

Some subscribers the dailyEXPRESS team spoke to expressed naivety at the information from MTN-Areeba, indicating that “all these things get one to be even more confused.”

Telephone calls and a fax to the offices of MTN-Areeba on the issue have remained unanswered.

While making further enquiries on the issue, the dailyEXPRESS team stumbled on a group of young men who were busy discussing the MTN-Areeba methodology leading to a conclusion that the value will indeed not be the same after the redenomination.

This followed deductions made by one of the arguing young men that the cellular service provider probably decided to “confuse everybody” because they were not sure how to re-denominate their call tariffs, or were probably not sure whether to round off in favour or against their subscribers.

The MTN-Areeba conversion clearly negates the whole conversion formula being promoted by the Bank of Ghana because there is no such thing as 0.1440 in the new Ghana Cedi. The Bank of Ghana PEC materials say after redenomination, ¢100 will be 1Gp, ¢400 will be 4Gp, ¢1000 becomes 10Gp and ¢10,000 being GH¢1 and so on.

The cost of a call within the Areeba network which currently costs ¢1440 should be either 14Gp or 15Gp and not ¢0.1440.

When the dailyEXPRESS reached Alex Abbiw, a member of the cellular service provider’s PR team, he declined comment, asking instead that the questions should be faxed. This was done on June 13, 2007.

A follow-up call after no response came to our fax failed to get answers, with a promise that the responses will be ready last week Tuesday. But as at the time of going to press, MTN-Areeba has been unable to answer questions and explain the rationale for the distortion of the ongoing Public Education Campaign.

Below are the questions faxed to MTN-Areeba, which have been ignored.

? Do you agree with complaints from some members of the public that your conversation of the Cedi to GH New Cedi is confusing and a negation of the Central Bank’s public education campaign ahead of the redenomination?

? Some subscribers have alleged that Areeba deliberately introduced (for example), the GH¢ 0.1440 knowing very well that there is no and will never be any such currently, but to avoid rounding up the call tariff to say 14p after June 30. How do you respond to that?

? If the deductions, perceptions & conclusions above are false, what informed the decision by Areeba to go the way of GH¢ 0.1440 etc instead of the more accurate and understood method of 14p?