APA – Accra (Ghana)
The report that the Director General of the National Communications Authority (NCA), Joe Anokye, has said that plans are far underway for Ghana to hook on to the 5G wireless data communication for mobile carriers is one of the leading stories in the Ghanaian press on Friday.
The Graphic reports that the Director General of the National Communications Authority (NCA), Joe Anokye, has said that plans are far underway for Ghana to hook on to the 5G wireless data communication for mobile carriers.
“We have made sure that the spectrum required for five 5G is available, there are few policies that must be made as to exactly how spectrum will be made available.”
It is very complicated, because of the way the market is, we don’t want to proceed and only one entity will have the capability of acquiring the 5G”, he told participants at the 12th R.P Baffour memorial lectures organized by the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in Kumasi.
His topic was “KNUST, a history of remarkable growth in science and technology education, resilience and adaptability in the digital space.”
Mr Anokye in an answer to a question as to when Ghana would be connected to the 5G services however, stated that, it was important for the NCA to beef up local internet services for majority of the people to access the 5G services.
“We have to make sure Wi-Fi services at various places where people meet are provided, there is a fibre optic connection to central point to make your 5G come”, he stated.
He currently said all internet traffic in Ghana pass through the submarine cable landing, with 5.9 terabytes in total, but were very complicated.
The newspaper says that the Minister of Energy, Dr Matthew Opoku Prempeh, has stated that Ghana has only started the exploitation of its petroleum resources and cannot sacrifice it midstream on the altar of energy transition.
He said although developed nations were pushing for energy transition — a changeover from the use of fossil oils that are identified to be polluting the environment to other sources such as solar, lithium and nuclear, together known as cleaner fuels — countries such as Ghana had only started exploitation of their resources and would continue with such plans to spur industrialisation and development.
The Energy Minister said the rich nations promoting such causes had harnessed and benefited from the same resources they now described as unclean, while Africa and other developing countries had just started utilising their endowments.
“It is high time we Africans started to produce and use energies we have on this continent for our own development and that is the push for the current crop of Energy Ministers around Africa,” Dr Prempeh stated while addressing delegates on the second day of the Local Content Conference and Exhibition in Takoradi, the Western regional capital, yesterday.
This year’s Local Content Conference and Exhibition also marks 10 years since the country’s promulgation of the Petroleum (Local Content and Local Participation) Regulations, 2013 (L.I. 2204), hence the theme: “Ten years of Local Content in Ghana’s Upstream Petroleum Industry; Achievements, Challenges and Prospects”.
Players in the industry, both downstream and upstream companies, service providers, maritime, port services, insurance and other financial institutions which had over the years contributed to the space, attended the conference.
More than 1,000 participants from Ghana, Nigeria, the Gambia, Uganda, Angola, Senegal and Trinidad & Tobago and Europe, among others, are attending the conference.
The Ghanaian Times reports that Germany has proposed to support Ghana with 145.9 million euros on technical and financial co-operation on three critical areas of the economy.
The areas are climate and energy, good governance, and sustainable economic develop-ment.
The Finance Ministry which disclosed this to the Ghanaian Times yesterday in a press statement, said the decision of the German government to support Ghana in those areas followed the completion of bilateral negotiations with the government of Germany.
The government of Ghana delegation was in Berlin to participate in the 2023 G20 Compact with Africa confer¬ence, as well as complete the annual bilateral negotiations with the Federal Republic of Germany.
The statement said the Ger¬man government lauded Gha¬na’s strong social protection policies under our Post-Covid Programme for Economic Growth (PC-PEG).
The statement said the Finance Minister took the op¬portunity to engage the IMF Managing Director, Kristalina Georgieva, on Ghana’s Inter¬national Monetary Fund (IMF) Programme during the Work¬ing Lunch of Africa Finance Ministers and representatives of International Institutions on the margins of the G20 Compact with Africa Confer¬ence in Berlin.
The newspaper says that players in the telecommunications industry have paid GH¢6.07 billion in taxes and other payments to gov¬ernment for the year 2022.
The amount is over 50 per cent increment of the GH¢4.02 billion paid in 2021.
The contributing telcos are AT, MTN, Vodafone, ATC, Helios, Comsys, CSquared, Ericsson, and Huawei.
This was made known by the Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Chamber of Telecommu-nication (GCT), Dr Kenneth Ash¬igbey, at the launch of the 2022 Mobile Industry Transparency Initiative report held on Tuesday, November 21, 2023 in Accra.
According to Dr Ashigbey, the industry’s contribution constitutes approximately 8.02 per cent of the government’s 2022 tax reve¬nue of GH¢75.71 billion per the 2022 annual report of the Ghana Revenue Authority.
The breakdown of tax contri¬butions included Corporate In¬come Tax (CIT), GH¢1.27 billion, representing 42.6 per cent, valued added tax, GH¢ 923 million, and withholding tax GH¢697 million.
The rest are communication service tax, GH¢511.6 million and GETFund, NHIS and COVID-19 levies, GH¢768 million amongst others.
On the controversial electronic transfer levy (E-Levy), the Cham¬ber said there was still the need for further revision in the E-levy rate to align it to government’s digital drive by default strategy.
“Our recommendation to the Ministry of Finance is to consider reducing the levy on transfer to 0.5 per cent and introduce a 0.5 per cent levy on cash-outs among other proposals,” the GCT said.
GIK/APA
Ghanaian press focuses on plans to hook on to 5G wireless data communication, others
