Safaricom has announced that it has increased its mobile tariffs with effect from midnight last night.
In a statement signed by CEO Bob Collymore, Safaricom said:
Over the last 18 years Safaricom has played a leading role in providing Kenyans with access to affordable and reliable communication services. In line with our purpose of transforming lives, we have invested strategically in our network, deploying new technologies and innovating continuously to enable us deliver relevant products and services to our customers.
While we remain committed to delivering great value to Kenyans, recent changes to taxes affecting our services were passed through the Finance Act 2018. In particular the Excise Duty tax applicable on Voice, SMS and Data services was increased from 10% to 15%. This is in addition to the prevailing Value Added Tax applicable to mobile services at the rate of 16%.
We have since then been undertaking extensive engagement with the Government on the impact, timing and exact nature of services that these taxes will affect.
Therefore, as a result of the increased taxes passed in the Finance Act 2018, we wish to notify our customers that from midnight tonight, the 18th October 2018, our headline price for voice calls and data will increase by 30 cents and SMS by 10 cents.
Additionally, we have also reviewed our prices for mobile data bundles, Fibre-To-The-Building (FTTB) and Fibre-To-The-Home (FTTH) to effect the new 15% Excise Duty tax on internet services. The full tariff guide has been filed with Communications Authority of Kenya as required by law and is available from our website, USSD, and all our customer touchpoints.
We are aware of and regret the impact these additional taxes on our customers. It is our sincere hope that these changes will not affect the remarkable gains we have made in mobile phone and internet penetration in Kenya over the last two decades.
