The Malawi Communications Regulatory Authority (Macra) says it has remitted K9.2 billion to government for the 2020/2021 financial year.

Macra director general Daudi Suleman has disclosed this during an interface with the Public Accounts Committee of Parliament (PAC).

According to Suleman, the dividends were realised through revenue that the Authority collects in the telecommunication sector.

“Macra is coming from a business background where the telecommunication sector provided a lot of revenue to Macra in the form International Call Termination Minutes.

“This was money that was coming to Macra for every phone call that was coming outside Malawi so for every minute, Macra would get eight cents,” said Suleman.

Whilst applauding the Authority for registering huge dividends, the Committee’s Chairperson Shadreck Namalomba has assured Macra that it will lobby for increment of its allocation.

“They retain 2 percent and 98 percent is supposed to go back to government upon which the Committee was of the view that that is too much, so we agreed to have a discussion around that together with the Ministry of Finance.

“Let me commend the board as well as management of Macra, they have consistently performed very well, they have been reporting surpluses.”

“Not many parastatal companies do report surpluses, the majority of them are a burden to government because they drain resources of government but in their case they have been giving money in form of dividends to Malawi Government,” said Namalomba.

According to Suleman, the revenue has now dwindled due to the emergence of technological advancement whereby people are using platforms like WhatsApp and Zoom.

However, the Authority has made revenues through licenced spectrums which it also sells to operators.