Vice President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia has given the deadline for the re-registration of SIM Cards with the National Identification card.

Speaking at the 5th Ghana CEO Summit in Accra on Monday, May 17, the Vice President said by the end of June or beginning of July this year, everybody will have to register their SIM with a National ID number.

“I expect that the Minister for Communications and Digitalization will soon announce the date for registration of the SIM card. Maybe by the end of June or beginning of July this year, everybody will have to register their SIM with a National ID number.”

“We all have to do that otherwise we’ll lose that SIM card and that will really give us a real identity for all MoMo transactions. For example, it takes away fraud that is taking place like SIM box and through MoMo”, he said.

He further indicated that the digitization of the birth and death registry is about 80 percent complete.

“We’re also doing the births and death registry; the digitization is 80% complete now. What we are putting in place is a system so that from next year when a child is born within a month, each child will be given a unique National ID number."

“We have to move into a new economy because it is going to provide a single source of truth and a unique identity for all transactions across the spectrum. And so this year, what we’ve been doing since we came into office has been the integration of the national ID card database with other key databases."

“We’ve integrated it with SSNIT, we’ve integrated with GRA. And with GRA, for example, up to 2016, TIN numbers in Ghana was 750,000. By making the TIN number our national ID number, we’ve immediately increased it from 750,000 to 15.5 million as of now.”