Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Vodafone Ghana, Patricia Obo-Nai, has said the network operator is tax compliant and has no intention of evading taxes in the country.
The CEO made the assertion while airing her view on the allegation of revenue under-statement made by Minister for Communication and Digitalisation, Ursula Owusu, against her network and the other mobile network operators in the country.
Communications and Digitalisation Minister, Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, has in several media engagements and on the floor of Parliament accused the various telecommunication companies in the country of under-stating their revenue to government to avoid tax charges.
According to the Minister, revenue under-statement by telcos in the country was the main objective for which government contracted KelniGvG to monitor the revenue streams of the various telcos for the appropriate tax revenues to be collected by government.
“Since the first quarter of 2017 till date, an estimated Ghs 470 million in taxes have been saved as well as a potential loss of Ghs 1.5 billion from the monitoring platform and I have been informed that the Ghana Revenue Authority has contracted an auditing firm, Safaritech which confirms the savings,” averred the Minister at a Parliamentary Vetting Committee on February 16 this year.
She justified the implementation of the KelniGvG Common Platform (CP) saying, it has helped the country to boost its tax collections from the telecom sector.
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But reacting to the allegation in an interview on the Chamber Dialogue hosted by Derek Laryea, Head of Research & Communications at the Ghana Chamber of Telecommunications and monitored by norvanreports, Mrs Obo-Nai refuted the allegation asserting taxes and other statutory payments to government are of topmost priority to the company.
“Statutory payments are the first that go out of my books every single month, and plus we are one of the most audited companies both locally and globally and so we have zero room to do that, because the impact on the company will be grave.”
“The loss to the brand is bigger than the tax I am going to evade in the country and there is so much damage waiting for us out there if we do that. And so we don’t have the luxury to do that,” she opined.
“But we are waiting for the audit report by the Ministry so that we can see the exposure and try and understand what it means, but as I sit here I have no idea about it. I can confidently say that from everything we have done and checked, we do not do that,” she added.
The allegation made by the Communication Minister has also been refuted by the Ghana Chamber of Telecommuincations, the umbrella union of telecommunication companies in the country.
The Chamber debunking the allegation made by the Minister stated that there is no valid basis for the revenue under-statement allegation made against telcos in the country.
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“Last year, we highlighted that the mobile industry is deeply concerned about the continuous recurrence of these claims, and the fact that standard audit principles and practices that characterize our members dealings with regulators continue to be breached.”
“The Chamber has heard from discussions that even when customers buy data with mobile money, they are charged by the telcos and thereby the telcos make profit but government does not get its due and that’s not true. In 2019, our members paid almost Ghs 30 million as taxes from the mobile money service.
“We have requested from GRA to furnish us with the findings that points to our members under-declaring revenue over a year now and we will continue to request for this report.”
“Revenue Growth is key for all our members, indeed you want to declare the right kind of revenue because that assures key shareholders and the investor community that your business is growing or has prospect to grow.”
“Therefore, there should be no logical cause or reason for our members to under-declare revenue. We are very concerned about this development and we entreat Government to engage with the industry on such serious reputational issues before conclusions are drawn to the general public,” posited the Chamber.
