Ghana Telecom is losing about $1 million a week. Additionally, the Minister of Communications is drawing the ire of the government, and a cash-strapped Minister of Finance is leaning on his colleague to reverse what is suspected to be a fraudulent leakage in the GT system leading to a massive decline in revenues for GT and the government of Ghana from a median figure of $42 million to consistent depreciation of $14 million over the last four years.
The paper?s follow-ups after the public spirited debate over the Telecom-Telenor saga appear to lead to known sources anxious to halt an imminent plugging of loopholes that official Telecom sources show have led to losses amounting to ?560 billion.
Official and unofficial communication sources revealed that in 1998, the International Telephone Traffic Revenue yielded US$42 million.
The following year, it dropped by $8.14 million to $33.98 million followed by a further drop in 2000 by $7.63 million to $26.4 million in 2001. This further reduced by $7.06 million to $14.14 million last year.
These figures show losses incurred in respect of international telephones usually by internet service providers who apply for huge number of phone lines to run their business but in actual fact use them for these services and split the revenue with the International arm of agencies.
The shocking shortfall has alarmed the government given the fact that some 100,000 new lines have been installed since 1998 by GT.
Sources close to the Finance Minister confirmed that he sent a testy letter to the Communication Minister pushing him to account for the steep decline and demanded a reversal in decline.