<<Print>>

The Ghana Chamber of Telecommunications has pointed out what it claims to be oversights and flaws in the recently released Subah Committee Report by the Ministry of Finance. The Chamber, in a letter to the Minister of Finance, stated that the committee overlooked the main issues for which it was set up to investigate the Ghana Revenue Authority-Subah Infosolutions contract. The Chamber�s letter, signed by Kwaku Sakyi-Addo, its CEO, said the committee invited people from Subah to tell their side of the story but ignored telcos. It also noted that Subah and GRA accused telcos of refusing to cooperate with Subah between 2010 and 2012. On media reports that Subah Infosolutions had been paid GH�74million from 2010 to 2012 for services allegedly not rendered to GRA, it said: �We did not react because it was our expectation that the Committee, set up by the Ministry of Finance, would enable telcos to clarify or correct certain facts that had been overlooked or misrepresented. �The 14-member Committee did not invite or speak to any telco in its investigations. However, it had three representatives from Subah Infosolutions.� The Chamber mentioned that telcos could not have denied Subah access to their respective nodes if they had been made aware of Subah�s existence or the service it had been contracted to provide, adding that none of them received a letter from Subah to that effect. �Subah�s first letter to telcos asking for a meeting was dated October 28, 2013 following the introduction letter from the GRA referenced above.� Touching on call data records (CDRs) which telcos submit to NCA, it said these were for international in-bound traffic and therefore there was no CST charged as the calls originated from outside Ghana. It emphasized that Subah Infosolutions could not possibly have verified CST by analyzing CDRs held by NCA. �Telcos do not send CDRs to GRA, for which domestic traffic on CST is levied. Telcos are audited on site by GRA itself.� �If Subah Infosolutions did not contribute to the increase in access lines between June 2010 and October 2013 as admitted by the Committee, and did not electronically audit telcos or analyze CDRs for the reasons explained above, we fail to fathom the basis for apportioning revenue between the Government and Subah.� Meanwhile, it said each telco was currently at an advanced stage of completion following technical and legal due diligence.