With more than 200 million subscribers to telecom services, Nigeria is one of the main telecom markets in Africa. As the sector continues to grow, the government wants to get more out of it.
The Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) is committed to increasing the amount of revenue from the telecommunications sector that goes into federal government coffers. To this end, the regulator on Friday, June 17 signed a public-private partnership (PPP) agreement with its consultant, 3R Company Nigeria Limited, to deploy Revenue Assurance Solutions (RAS).
The new solution will be connected to the systems of licensed telecommunications operators. It will collect and report in near real time the billing activities of the operators with the aim of calculating and guaranteeing, with a minimum or zero margin of error, the accumulated annual operating tax payable to the NCC by the latter. .
According to Umar Danbatta, executive vice-president of the NCC, this solution comes at the right time, as it comes at a time when the resources available to the government continue to decrease day by day. However, it should be remembered that telecommunications contributed 12.45% to the national GDP in 2020. In 2021, the sector generated 3,247 billion naira (about 7.74 billion USD).
“ We believe that if we can successfully deploy RAS and get a true picture of what Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) are expected to pay in Annual Operating Fee (AOL), we will have reached a milestone. important in the area of revenue generation for the Commission and for the government ,” Mr. Danbatta added.