Broaden Ghana’s Tax Net – Akufo-Addo to GRA

President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has challenged the Ghana Revenue Authority and the Finance Ministry to find additional innovative ways to widen the tax net of the country.

Speaking at the official commissioning of the National Communication Authority – Cert and the Common Platform at the NCA Tower, the President said Ghana’s development is directly linked to the amount of revenue it can generate through initiatives such as the common platform.

“As we commission these two essential facilities, I am charging the Commissioner of the Ghana Revenue Authority, through the Minister of Finance, to continue and roll out new and innovative ways to broaden Ghana’s tax net,” the President said.

“We are in a hurry to move this country forward, we have marked time for far too long. The time to realise the dreams and aspirations of our forebears in building a progressive and prosperous nation is long overdue. The time is now,” the President added.

Communications Minister

The Minister for Communication, Ursula Ekuful, in her address said she is excited that all the multiple law suits that were instituted against the introduction of the Common Platform at the High Court either failed or have been withdrawn.

She urged all mobile network operators to cooperate with the NCA, GRA and Kelni GVG and provide the information they need to monitor mobile money in addition all other monitoring activities. Failure to do so within the next 48 hours the Minister said will attract the imposition sanctions prescribed in Act 864.

The Common Platform

The Revenue Assurance and Traffic Monitoring Centre, also known as Common Platform, is a monitoring platform established by the Ministry of Communications and Ministry of Finance to assure government’s revenue in the telecoms industry. National Communications Authority (NCA) and Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) will be the primary users and beneficiaries of the Common Platform on behalf of their respective ministries. The main functions of the Common Platform will be traffic monitoring, revenue assurance, mobile money monitoring and fraud management (SIM Box Tracking and Geo-location).

Traffic Monitoring

The Common Platform System with regard to Traffic Monitoring, will among others monitor international incoming traffic terminated in Ghana, international outgoing traffic originated from Ghana, domestic (On-Net and Off-Net) voice traffic in Ghana, domestic (On-Net and Off-Net) SMS traffic in Ghana and data traffic in Ghana.

Revenue Assurance

With regard to the capacity of the Common Platform on Revenue Assurance, the system will provide the amount of revenue generated from mobile and fixed network operators as well as broadband wireless access licensees and generate monthly, quarterly and annual statistics on revenue generated from tele-communications services based on prepaid services, post-paid services, value added services, and wholesale services.

Fraud management

On fraud management, the system will have the ability to manage the tracking of international call terminations, on a sample basis, to detect and report the by-passing of the legally  declared routes for international traffic into Ghana and assist in blocking  such numbers as well as the ability to provide  equipment which could at the minimum use available information from the operators, including  by-pass traffic information and other network elements, to search for and locate illegal SIM Box operators.