Tackling High Prices: Why Structure, Not Populism, Is the Path Forward – IMANI Brief
The Minister for Communications, Digital Technology and Innovations, Hon. Samuel Nartey George, has engaged executives of MultiChoice Ghana, operators of DSTV, on their pricing strategy, citing concerns about affordability, revenue leakages, and regulatory compliance.
He has requested further dialogue with the Group CEO of MultiChoice Africa to explore how the company can better align its operations with Ghana’s economic context. This intervention, while well-meaning in its intent to protect consumers, once again raises the recurring tension in Ghana’s economic policy space: the temptation to address market outcomes through pressure, rather than through structural reform and regulatory coordination.
Affordability Must Be Built, Not Demanded; DSTV pricing, like many services in Ghana, reflects a confluence of factors that no single directive can fix: exchange rate volatility, which affects licensing costs and satellite operations, taxation on digital services, market structure, where limited competition gives dominant players more pricing power, and operational overheads.
These are systemic factors, not mere corporate preferences. While consumer frustration is valid, a meaningful and lasting solution cannot come from ordering price alignment, but rather by reforming the conditions that make prices high in the first place.
Recent policy history offers a useful parallel. When the Ministry of Trade and Industry introduced a Legislative Instrument (LI) aimed at regulating cement prices, it sparked sharp pushback. The original draft suggested government control over factory pricing, but after consultation, that clause was dropped. What remained was a regulatory framework focused more on transparency than control.
This outcome was instructive. It showed that Government can and should work to ensure fairness and predictability in pricing, especially in oligopolistic sectors. However, practical control over pricing in liberalized markets where inputs are volatile is extremely limited. The better role for the state is to strengthen regulatory oversight, promote competition, and create conditions where market forces work for the consumer.
DSTV and cement operate in different sectors, but the lesson holds: price fairness is a by-product of good policy, not administrative pressure. If the state wishes to reduce prices for pay-TV, internet data, and related services, the following steps are more productive than direct pricing pressure.
Strengthen competition by supporting alternative platforms (e.g. local streaming services) and lowering entry barriers, review and rationalize the tax burden on digital services, enhance enforcement of content bundling regulations, transparency on charges, and quality-of-service metrics.
Hon. Samuel George’s efforts reflect a genuine desire to protect the public from rising costs in an era of economic strain. But pricing pressure alone, especially in a liberalized can only go so far. Ghana needs to rebuild the economic and regulatory structures that allow prices to fall sustainably, not demand it. The lesson from the cement case is clear: transparency matters, but real price relief comes when structural problems are addressed, exchange rate exposure, tax regimes, and regulatory inertia.
