Vodafone Ghana is resisting attempts by the government to install on the premises of telecom operators, systems to monitor international calls for the purpose of taxation.

Vodafone Ghana CEO, Kyle Whitehill told journalists: "We do not think the monitoring equipment is absolutely necessary because we have very transparent ways of accounting for all inbound international traffic on our network and we continue to pay government the required six cents per minute of international calls received on our network."

Vodafone in particular has been cited by communications minister, Haruna Iddrisu for resisting the installation of international call monitoring equipment on their premises, but Mr. Whitehill said Vodafone is not resisting anything but only offering alternatives.

"You can see how much international traffic comes onto our network on a day-to-day basis.  We do not think you have to install specific probing systems to do that," he said.

Meanwhile the government has hired a Haitian company called Global Voice Group (GVG), and they have installed monitoring equipment on the premises of some telecom operators to verify inbound international calls.

Some operators have criticised the move as interference in the privacy of their customers and also a threat to network quality, as calls going through the monitoring system stand the risk of being distorted due to "too much equipment".

Vodafone was also the first to go public in expressing their nervousness about the GVG, which was relieved of their duties in some African countries after those countries decided they did not need a third party to monitor international calls for revenue.

But the Ministry of Communications insists that since the coming of GVG, and the installation of monitoring equipment, government has gone from a loss of US$5.8 million a month in taxes to a gain in taxes of over US$14 million on inbound international calls.