MTN’s profit after tax for half year 2026 was a staggering GHS5.1BN, this is an increase of a hooping 43.3% over the same period last year. This is more than the combined profits of GHS4.58BN of seventeen top companies in Ghana for the same period. These seventeen companies include first-tier banks like Standard Chartered, GCB, Ecobank, CAL and respected giants like Unilever Ghana, GOIL, BOPP among others. The performance of MTN is no doubt fantastic.
Notwithstanding these colossal profits which can more than double by end of year, in May 2026 MTN proposed to charge transfers from MOMO to bank accounts; Reason? “To help serve customers better and to support improvement in service delivery”, thank God Bank of Ghana shot it down”. The question on my mind, however, is how much profit is enough, reasonable or morally justifiable?
In a free market situation, like we have in Ghana, making profits is far from illegal but in the court of public opinion making these kinds of extra ordinary profits like that of MTN vis-a-vis sub-standard service and constant customer complaints of high service cost is unconscionable.
A few thoughts;
- With over 72% of market share (that is, over 31M subscribers); MTN is clearly in a dominant position in the telephony market. Are they therefore abusing their dominance?
- Is this performance the result of quality service delivery or overpricing and lack of viable options by subscribers?
- Sadly, as government is removing taxes, including e-levy to free Ghanaians from needless hardships, another in the name of free market and customers’ free will to choose, is doing the opposite.
For years, the private sector in many African countries has perfected one trick: overcharge the people, make excessive profit, (which is shipped out of Africa) and when questioned, hide behind the abused phrases; free market and the customers’ right to choose. This is deception and an economic injustice.
- Free Market
Free market was meant to promote fair competition, efficiency, and reasonable profit for good service. What we have is a captive market.
When all cement companies increase prices on the same day, where is the freedom? When all private schools in a neighbourhood charge the same exorbitant fees, where is the choice? When internet data, bank lending rates and many other charges keep rising without commensurate improvement in service. Banks use high NPL as one of the reasons for their high lending rates yet when a new bank enters the space, they also charge the same high rates. This is not market forces at play. It is collusion and exploitation. It is price-fixing by gentlemen’s agreement.
- Nobody is Forcing You – customer choice
How can you say nobody is forcing a young graduate to buy overpriced data when without it he cannot apply for a job, study, or do business?
When public schools have eighty pupils in a class with no chairs and most basic of learning and teaching materials. How can you then say nobody is forcing parents to send their children to private schools? How can you call that choice?
When notwithstanding the national health insurance, patients still pay non-accountable bills, hospitals have no beds, no medicines and the doctor comes twice a week? Why won’t the sick patronise expensive private hospitals?
You can not call customer choice when the alternative is worse. At best it is exploitation of already bad situation.
We have seen a situation in Ghana when the dollar is up fuel prices go up and prices of all other goods and services go up, but when the dollar goes down it takes ‘war’ for prices such as lending rates, cost of data, Multichoice subscriptions and many others to come down. This to say the least is insensitivity.
- The Result
The everyday Ghanaian works only to pay bills with nothing to save or invest. Our salaries are consumed by school fees, rent, data, electricity, water, health; woe to you if there is an emergency. The middle class is being wiped out, not only by government taxes, but by private sector greed.
And when we complain, they say, “If you cannot afford, go elsewhere.” But elsewhere is the same.
- What Must Be Done
There is no absolute free market anywhere in the world, not even in America.
A free market without regulation can be likened to a jungle environment where the strong and big makes a meal of the small and weak.
Government should not be afraid of the giant conglomerates and multinationals. Regulation is not anti-business; it is pro-people.
Am not looking for a return to the price control regime but rather a body that will come up with a cost build-up of essential goods and services and cap profit margin for critical goods and services such as education, health and communication.
Remember there is no such thing as free market, regulation is not anti-business, government has a country (including the private sector) to manage. Excessive profits via overcharging and the notion that the customer has a choice is a weak defence for the exploiter.
By: Richard Adjorlolo / BIG RKNA / Takoradi.
