MTN passes on tax windfall

When the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) revised Value Added Tax Act took effect on January 1, few consumers would have expected their mobile operator to respond within 24 hours. Yet by the following morning, MTN Ghana — the country's dominant telecoms operator — had cut tariffs across its entire product suite, from voice calls to data bundles to device financing. The speed of the move was unusual. The economics behind it are more interesting still.