Savannah News Online Reporting Only What Matters Most
Related Articles
Tamale, Ghana – Chief Executive Officer of Ghana’s leading publicly listed company, MTN Ghana, has announced that as part of the company’s areas of focus in 2022 it would be “improving customer experience across all services and regions to further enhance subscriber growth and usage of our services”.
Selorm Adadevoh said “we also plan to expand our 4G/4G+ service by implementing 4G everywhere you go (every site) by the end of 2022 and scale up efforts in the digitalization journey with a focus on MyMTN and the ayoba super app. Mobile money ecosystem expansion will also be a key focus for us through innovations in advanced services and work to deepen the penetration of MoMo users within the base.”
Addressing shareholders at the 4th Annual General Meeting of MTN Ghana in Accra on Monday, Mr Adadevoh also indicated that, the company forecast service revenue growth over the medium-term from the previous 13% to 15%. “In addition, we will progress the execution of the expense efficiency programme and our prudent approach to managing costs to deliver on our commitment of margin expansion.”
The objective of the AGM was to enable the Board of MTN Ghana share with shareholders report of activities and business performance of the company for the year ended December 31, 2021.
Corporate Social Investments
MTN Ghana Foundation, in 2021 commissioned three landmark projects in health and ICT skills development as well as extended a scholarship program to support 300 tertiary students as part of the celebration of the company’s 25th anniversary.
The Foundation equipped 100 young Ghanaians with technological skills in telephone and device diagnostics and repairs through its youth empowerment initiative. It also extended its support to 465 students through the MTN Bright Scholarship Scheme of which 119 successfully completed their programme. Overall, the Foundation disbursed Gh¢2.3 million to cover tuition, accommodation and a stipend for books.
The Foundation also constructed a blood bank unit for the Cape Coast Teaching Hospital in Cape Coast, constructed a 600 bed girls dormitory block for Tamale Senior High School in Tamale and a 24-unit classroom block for the Ghana Police School in Accra. These formed part of a total commitment of Gh¢14.3 million earmarked towards CSR projects for the year.
For 2022, the Foundation intends to dedicate at least Gh¢20 million towards social investments to support the communities within which MTN operates.
Operational Review in 2021
In view of rapid growth of mobile connectivity every year, MTN Ghana in 2021 invested a total capital expenditure of Gh¢1.5 billion supporting infrastructure modernization, expansion of 4G population coverage to over 90.6% and improvements to quality of service.
Mr Adadevoh noted that, “improvements to network capacity and quality were made possible by rolling out 131 2G, 120 3G and 1,446 4G sites and modernizing 2,121 existing 4G sites. We extend 4G network and data services to an additional 1.7 million people, deepening digital inclusion in Ghana.”
He added: “Growth in mobile money advanced service offerings such as retail merchant payments, micro loans, insurance and international remittances supported an increase in mobile money revenue by 38.2% year on year to Gh¢1.7 billion. The contribution of mobile money to service revenue increased from 20.9% to 22.5% year on year.”
Board Chairman
Board Chairman of MTN Ghana, Ishmael Yamson, said in spite of Covid-19 and other economic challenges, the company “recorded strong growth in service revenue (+28.5% year on year) and managed its costs prudently which led to growth in profit after tax of 43.5% year on year to Gh¢2.0 billion.”
He added: “After reviewing the full year performance of the company in 2021, the Board shall be recommending a final dividend of 8.5 pesewas on ordinary shares to be approved by shareholders at today’s meeting. This is further to the interim dividend of 3.0 pesewas per share declared by the Board after reviewing the half year performance of the company. This brings the total dividend for the year 2021 to 11.5 pesewas per share and represents 70.6% of profit after tax and a 43.8% increase in dividend per share payout in 2021 over 2020.”
By SavannahNewsOnline.Com/Joseph Ziem
