‘Economy’ hits Telecom Companies

By Our Reporter

8^th Aug 2022

Telecommunications companies have reported that their operations over the last six months have been affected by what they call a difficult macroeconomic environment, characterized by the skyrocketing cost of living and foreign exchange rate.

According to the Uganda Bureau of Statistics, the inflation rate rose for the eight consecutive months at the end of July, going to 7.9 percent for the end July 2022, from 6.8 percent in the period ended June 2022.

This is the highest rate recorded since December 2015.

This has largely been influenced by higher fuel prices, rising domestic food crop due to dry weather conditions across the country, as well as persistent production and supply chain challenges.

The combination of these factors has had a significant impact in the spending power of the customers in the period under review,” said the outgoing MTN Uganda Chief Executive Officer, Wim Vanhelleputte adding that this affected the demand for services and maintenance of the products they were running.

Despite this however, MTN’s profit after tax grew by almost half to 193.6 billion shillings, enabling it to declare an interim dividend of 5 shillings per share.

If approved by the shareholders, 111 billion shillings in total will be paid out to the shareholders.

Airtel Africa on its part has no aggregated figures for individual subsidiaries but says total revenues by 13 percent 1.2 billion dollars, due to a strong performance in the voice, data and mobile money segments.

The business operations in East Arica posted the highest growth rates of 28 percent, according to Airtel Africa Segun Ogun-sanya.