(Ecofin Agency) - On October 23, 2018, Nana Akufo-Addo (photo), Ghanaian president, inaugurated the common platform for telecommunications supervision. The infrastructures built by Kelni GVG will allow the national Communications Authority to monitor international telecommunications traffic in real time.

This tool will help the government levy the exact tax on international calls. The infrastructures which can geolocate SIMBOX will contribute to the fight against frauds in the telecommunications sector. With its competence to supervise mobile money transfers, it will help combat money laundering.

Edmund Fianko, project manager at NCA, explains that "the common platform is a verification system, it does not generate direct revenues. In the past we just trusted it, now we can independently verify. So we have systems connected to the operator data center that gives us very raw data which is processed and enables us to be able to know the volume that has passed and what revenues are due on account on the communication services that have been delivered in the country".

Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, Ghanaian minister of communications stresses that "there was never any intention to infringe on the privacy of citizens' communications through the common platform. That was a myth put out by some civil society organizations which led to some lawsuits against the platform. Their injunction application was thrown out by the High Court […] Our only motivation was to provide an objective means of verifying the information provided by the telcos for tax revenue purposes, in accordance with the law".

Apart from monitoring the traffic to increase tax revenues, the common platform will also help the Ghanaian government to save $1.1 million per month.

For the management of this infrastructure, Kelni GVG received $1.5 million per month and Subah Infosolutions, the former international telecom traffic monitor will receive $2.6 million. After five years, the platform built and managed by Kelni GVG, in the framework of a Build-Operate-Transfer Contract (BOT) will belong to Ghana.