MTN Ghana’s upward review of the tariffs for its products and services has taken effect today, 7th February 2023.
According to the biggest telecommunication company in the country, the review reflects two changes– first, the implementation of the statutory 2.5 percentage point increase in VAT from 12.5% to 15% across all services. This, the company said, will affect both prepaid and post-paid customers.
Secondly, MTN Ghana is proceeding with a 15% average upward review of its mobile data tariffs which was originally announced in November 2022 and was suspended. The increase in mobile data tariffs will affect both pay-monthly and pay-as-you-go users.
The review in mobile data bundle offers covers products available on the short codes 138 and 170, as well as on purchases through Electronic Voucher Distribution, MTN Pulse, and Data Zone except for XtraTime. Moreover, the data tariff increases do not apply to Fibre Broadband and Fixed Wireless Access (4G Router/Turbonet) customers.
With this review, voice users will receive less airtime because of the VAT implementation, and mobile data customers will receive smaller data bundle allocations.
The Chief Commercial Officer for MTN, Noel Kojo-Ganson, explained the impact by giving an example of how the new pricing will work. “A customer who previously got 24.4 minutes’ airtime for GHC3 before the VAT increase will now get 23.9 minutes, while a GHC3 data bundle which previously gave 471 megabytes will now give 401 megabytes,” he explained.
Explaining the reason for the new prices for services, Kojo-Ganson noted that the recent shifts in the economy has led to rising operating costs, largely because of inflation.
“These economic shifts have impacted us directly, and for us to ensure we have the right balance for sustaining growth and investment into the network, we have had to consider price increases in various segments of our business.”
Noel Kojo-Ganson
MTN Recognises the Tough Times In The Country
Mr Kojo-Ganson sympathized with Ghanaians for the current hardship that the country is currently facing which is making life unbearable for some people in the country. However, he revealed some measures that will give a relief to customers.
“MTN recognises that we are in very tough times and would like to assure our customers that we will continue to offer them the convenience and flexibility in the purchase of data bundles at their desired price points via the MTN Flexi and Non-Expiry Bundles. Also, customers will continue to enjoy the 50% bonus incentive on mobile data purchases via MyMTN App and MoMo (valid for seven days) for 4G customers.”
Noel Kojo-Ganson
Kojo-Ganson noted that MTN remains committed to investing US$1 billion by 2025 to continue its network expansion and improve the network experience for its customers. The purpose of its growth plan targeting 2025 is to lead digital solutions for Africa’s network leadership by 2025.
That notwithstanding, some customers of the telecom giant are accusing the company of taking advantage of the market to cheat their customers.
It can be recalled that in June 2020, the government declared MTN Ghana as an SMP (Significant Market Player) meaning that it had adjudged MTN Ghana as crossing the 40% market share requirement and becoming overly dominant in the telecom market.
The declaration as per what MTN declared on its website “essentially means that special regulatory restrictions would be enforced to potentially limit the company’s growth, performance, innovativeness and its competitiveness in the telecoms market.”
As at the time of declaration MTN had a chokehold on the telecoms sector across all markets. They had a voice market share of over 70%, mobile data >70%, mobile money Revenue market share > 90% and a rapidly growing Fixed Broadband market share.
To balance the scale in the Telco industry, the government instructed MTN to limit some of its innovative promotional services which include the ‘free after 1’, MTN mashup, and many more. As a result, MTN reduced it’s ‘free after 1’ promo from 60 minutes to just 10 minutes.
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