Malawi Communications Regulatory Authority (MACRA) has justified the price hikes by mobile operators in the country.
Macra’s Communications Officer, Clara Mulonya said that the price hike by phone operators in the country was reasonable looking at the fact that things have gone up since the devaluation of the currency.
“I understand that people would always complain in such circumstances and that is how it should be and as Macra we can always intervene in circumstances where the service providers turn to charge exorbitantly than expected.
Mobile phone tariffs hike
“Macra in this case cannot decide what price such bodies should set on their services because they are forced by several external factors for example when you look at the economic environment in which we are in,” she said.
Recently, the communication sector has seen its subsidiaries like Airtel Malawi, Telecom Networks Malawi (TNM), Malawi Telecommunications Limited (MTL) increasing prices of their services of which an Airtel customer would always cough in K21 to send and SMS to a TNM colleague whilst in return; a TNM customer gives out K19 for an SMS to an Airtel subscriber.
