Fight Against SIMBox Fraud Has Been Meaningful – Ursula

Communications Minister, Ursula Owusu Ekuful has said the implementation of the Common Monitoring Platform (CMP) has helped government to curb SIMbox fraud and that has allowed savings of over US$205.6 million, which would have been lost to the state and to telcos if not for the platform.

Ursula Owusu said the platform has a feature called TeleCop, which monitors SIMBox fraud by generating over 150,000 calls from abroad into Ghana daily, in order to trace and deactivate fraudulent SIMs used in terminating those calls.

The Minister was speaking to journalists about the performance of the CMP since its inception in 2017.

“The state-of-the-art TeleCop system is expected to deliver tax savings of approximately GH₵795.9 million from in-bound international calls over the five-year contract period,” she said.

Secure space

The SIM Registration Regulations, 2011 (LI 2006) was enacted to basically reduce mobile phone-related crimes such as prank calls, cyber-crime, mobile money fraud and its related issues and also help improve the general security in the telecommunications industry.

As a result, beginning January 1, 2020, all holders of SIM cards in the country will be required to re-register them within six months, after which all unregistered ones will be terminated.

“Improving the communication experience of Ghanaians is the vision of the NCA day in, day out and consumers are growing more and more dependent on the Internet as a means of communication and as a link to other resources for everyday life,” Mrs Owusu Ekuful told the regulators.

Mobile Money

On mobile money monitoring, the Minister noted that since the beginning of this year, when that function came on stream, it has recorded GH₵29.1 billion average monthly flotations from 195.8 billion mobile money transactions.

She said the telcos are making a quantum of GH₵71million as transaction fees per month from those GH₵195.8 billion mobile money transactions, and she believes they need to pay a separate tax on that.

According to her, she and the Finance Minister are at variance on whether the telcos should pay a separate tax on their mobile money transaction fees, but she believes that GRA needs to have a conversation with the telcos about that.

Meanwhile, some critics like CDD-Ghana have said that imposing another tax on mobile money transaction fee, in addition to what telcos already pay as corporate taxes on all their revenue streams, would only lead to those taxes being passed on to the consumer who is already burdened with a 50% increase in CST.

They are therefore advising the Communications Ministry to shelve the proposed tax on mobile money transaction fees.

Background

According to the Ghana Telecommunications Chamber, the state loses more than GH¢3 million every month to SIM box fraud.

Beyond the monthly losses, activities of the fraudsters had also led to a decline in International Direct Dialing (IDD) revenue from as high as GH¢222 million in 2012 to about GH¢56 million, which is projected for the end of 2019, a 74 per cent reduction.

The Head of the Cyber Crime Unit of the Ghana Police Service, Dr Gustav Yankson had earlier said that although there was an alarming surge in the activities of SIM box fraudsters, a joint effort by the Cyber Crime Unit and the Ghana Telecommunications Chamber had resulted in a series of operations to round up the criminals at different locations in Accra.

Within the last two weeks alone, he said, the joint effort had resulted in raids at different locations within Accra, in the course of which four adults were arrested, while two others were on the run.