By Tione Andsen

Lilongwe, May 31, Mana: Malawi Regulatory Authority (MACRA) has bemoaned that court dispute over the implementation of Revenue Assurance System (RAS) costed the authority US$ 20 million.

MACRA Director General, Daud Suleman disclosed this Thursday during a press briefing on RAS implementation at Crossroads Hotel in Lilongwe.

He said the time MACRA was fighting the court disputes over the RAS project made them to lose over US$ 20 million.

“You may recall that this RAS project was first introducing in the country 10 years ago but Agents thought MACRA was intending to install spying machine,” Suleman said.

He said MACRA went through courts of arbitration where it was awarded US$ 7 million.

“We are going to follow the Directors of Agents wherever they are Bahamas, Las Vegas we will find them in order for us to collect the said amount,” Suleman hinted. 

He said in this new digital world, MACRA could not dare to install spying machines for its operators and this could result into massive pull out of business in the communication sector.

“We have invested US$ 6 million to implement the project within two years and this has been done in very transparent and professional manner. You can now see that we lost US$ 20 million in 10 years over the implementation of the same project,” the Director General added.

He said the RAS project would help his organization to have collect data on mobile and data operator are generating their revenues and remit the required percentage to MACRA.

Suleman added the issue of call drops were difficult to handle with the mobile operator but MACRA was not able to have backing evidence before them.

“We have installed RAS, we will be able to have back proof of call drops where customers are being while their call drops,” he explained.     

The Director said MACRA projects a K 14 billion profit for the 2024-205 financial year saying for the past three years the profits have been growing.

“For instance in 2021-2022, we had a profit of K 5 billion which was paid to government as dividend, the following year we had a profit of K 9 billion and last financial year, which were remitted to government. We had a profit of K 13 billion. We are anticipating to triple our profit by the end of the financial year,” Suleman said.

He noted that last year the economy was quite tough but they were able to make such profits signaling that there a potential in the market.

Suleman said MACRA has demonstrated that it could grow its business, create more market and service the country better.

 A businessperson in Area 3, Kamwana Ndevu said MACRA has role to ensure that data and mobile service operators are working within the agreed terms of references.

He said sometimes these operators are robbing customers due to high cost of data and poor service delivery.