Minister of Communications, Ursula Owusu Ekuful, has welcomed the dismissal of the suit filed by telecom operator MTN Ghana against the National Communications Authority (NCA).
The Minister said she was happy with the ruling.
On Tuesday, September 1, an Accra High Court dismissed the application brought before it by MTN and seeking to halt the directive by the NCA to classify the telco as a significant market player (SMP) in the industry.
The judgment paves the way for the NCA to take measures to promote competition in the sector.
The Court presided over by Justice Samuel Asiedu, a Court of Appeal judge, sitting with additional responsibility as a High Court judge, awarded a cost of GH¢10,000 against MTN.
Reacting to the news, Mrs Ursula Owusu Ekuful said: “I am glad that the court has dismissed MTN’s application for judicial review and indicated that the NCA went through the proper processes to declare it as a significant market power.
“I am sure they will work very quickly to continue the processes that were suspended because of the court case,” she said.
“It is not healthy for any country to have a single dominant operator which has about 70 per cent of the revenue market share and 60 per cent of the total market share. It is unhealthy, and that is why certain measures need to be kicked in.
“We want the regulator to sit with all players and develop sustainable mechanisms to address the current imbalance and ensure that it doesn’t happen again. Maybe, we will also fault the regulator for not acting early enough because the signs have been there as far back as 2015 and they have been aware of that because it was in 2015 that the study was commissioned and the results came out either late 2016 or early 2017, and the regulator has been aware of that.
“So, it is incumbent they build on that, update that, and that led to the declaration earlier in June this year. So, I’m hopeful that they will act timeously to put in place the measures that correct the imbalance,” she told Accra-based Citi.
By Laud Nartey|3news.com|Ghana