- Telecom Industry Pays GH¢15bn To the State but Wants Room to Invest More
Ghana’s telecommunications industry is pressing government to rethink the structure of taxes and regulatory charges imposed on the sector, arguing that targeted fiscal incentives could unlock additional investment, widen digital adoption and ultimately expand the country’s revenue base.
The call was made by tax analyst Francis Timore Boi Esq during the Digital Infrastructure and Nation Building forum organised by the Ghana Chamber of Telecommunications and Deloitte. At the centre of the debate is a growing policy tension: how much revenue government should extract from telecoms today without weakening the investment needed to expand the digital economy tomorrow.
Figures presented at the forum showed that the sector contributed about GH¢15bn in taxes, levies, regulatory fees and related payments in 2025, equivalent to roughly 6.80% of Ghana’s GH¢223bn domestic revenue for the year.
That marked a sharp increase from approximately GH¢6bn in 2022 and GH¢9bn in 2023, highlighting how rapidly telecommunications has grown as both an economic activity and a source of public revenue. Mr Boi argued that the size of that contribution makes the fiscal relationship between government and operators increasingly strategic.
“The telecom sector we are discussing goes beyond just phones and internet. It affects almost our livelihood,” he said. The sector’s contribution spans corporate income tax, withholding taxes, Communication Service Tax, VAT-related payments, import duties, regulatory charges and other statutory payments.
Corporate income tax alone was cited at roughly GH¢4.18bn, with withholding taxes at GH¢1.48bn, Communication Service Tax at about GH¢1bn and import duties on telecom equipment at approximately GH¢600mn.
Mr Boi stressed that the industry is not arguing that telecommunications should be exempt from taxation. “We are not really asking that this is a critical sector and therefore should not be taxed.
There is a balance, the right balance that we are looking for,” he said. That balance matters because operators must continually invest in towers, fibre, spectrum, data infrastructure, energy systems and successive generations of mobile technology.
The policy question is becoming more urgent as Ghana moves from basic network availability towards deeper digital usage.
The presentation cited population coverage of about 99.00% for 2G and 99.40% for 3G, with 4G availability continuing to expand. Yet high coverage does not necessarily mean people are participating fully in the digital economy, particularly where smartphones and data remain unaffordable.
That creates what the industry describes as a usage gap. People may live within the footprint of a mobile network but still be effectively excluded from modern digital services because they cannot afford appropriate devices or regular data access.
The problem is particularly significant in lower-income and rural communities, where smartphone and internet adoption remains weaker than in major urban centres such as Accra and Kumasi.
For operators, extending advanced connectivity to those areas can also be commercially difficult. A telecom tower serving a sparsely populated rural community can incur monthly operating expenses of between GH¢22,000 and GH¢30,000, according to the presentation, while revenues generated from users in that location may be only a fraction of those costs. That mismatch means market forces alone may not be enough to deliver universal access to high-quality digital infrastructure.
The industry is therefore proposing more targeted incentives for rural connectivity, smartphones and network equipment. Suggested measures include zero-rating or reducing taxes on smartphones and 5G equipment, alongside accelerated depreciation for qualifying telecom investments.
Objective is to improve cash flow and encourage operators to reinvest earlier rather than postpone infrastructure expansion because of high upfront tax and capital costs.
Data centres are another area where the sector wants policy attention. As artificial intelligence, cloud computing, e-commerce and digital financial services grow, Ghana will require greater domestic data-processing and storage capacity.
Mr Boi argued that creating a more competitive fiscal and regulatory environment for data centres could support the wider digital economy rather than treating such investments simply as another source of immediate tax revenue.
Energy, rights-of-way charges and spectrum costs are also adding to investment pressure. Telecom networks must operate continuously, including in locations where grid power is unreliable, forcing operators to use generators and other power systems, while spectrum fees add to the cost of accessing the frequencies required to deliver mobile services.
The cumulative effect of taxes, levies, regulatory charges and infrastructure expenses can therefore materially influence the commercial viability of further network expansion.
The experience of mobile money illustrates why the industry believes a broader view of economic value is necessary. Figures presented at the forum cited nearly GH¢40bn in mobile-money flows in 2025, around 26mn users and close to 500,000 agents, demonstrating how telecommunications infrastructure now supports a much wider financial ecosystem.
That activity generates employment, facilitates payments and brings money into formal and semi-formal transaction channels beyond the taxes collected directly from operators.
The former Electronic Transfer Levy was also cited as an example of the trade-off between direct taxation and activity growth. Although the E-Levy was abolished in May 2025, the sector had collected approximately GH¢840mn during the first four months of that year before its removal.
The broader argument advanced at the forum was that government revenue can also expand through greater economic activity rather than relying solely on additional tax burdens.
For policymakers, however, the challenge is to distinguish incentives that genuinely unlock new investment from concessions that simply reduce existing tax liabilities.
Any tax relief would need measurable conditions around infrastructure, rural coverage, device adoption, employment or additional capital expenditure if government is to establish whether the fiscal sacrifice produces sufficient economic return.
The case for a more investment-friendly framework therefore depends on accountability as much as affordability.
The stakes extend beyond telecom companies themselves because digital connectivity increasingly supports banking, education, healthcare, commerce, public administration and employment.
Policies that lower barriers to smartphone ownership, affordable data and network expansion can therefore have economic effects far outside the sector’s own balance sheets. That makes the fiscal treatment of telecommunications a wider development question rather than a narrow industry tax dispute.
Ghana’s telecom debate is consequently shifting. The sector has already demonstrated its importance to government revenue through its GH¢15bn contribution, but operators argue that the more consequential question is how much additional economic value can be generated if taxation and regulation are structured to encourage further investment.
The emerging policy choice is therefore not between taxing telecoms and supporting them, but between extracting revenue in ways that preserve growth and imposing costs that risk narrowing the digital economy from which future revenues must come.
