Cameroon's Telecommunications Regulatory Board (TRB) intends to carry out a financial audit of the country's mobile network service providers, other than the state-run Cameroon Telecommunications (Camtel).

The regulator says it will look into telcos holding concessions in Cameroon, notably MTN Cameroon, Orange Cameroun and Viettel Cameroun (Nexttel).

According to Philemon Zoo Zame, General Manager of TRB, the main objective of the study is to ensure the authenticity of financial records submitted to them by operators, in a bid to guarantee that the correct annual royalties are paid to the state.

Under existing regulations, mobile telecoms companies in Cameroon have the obligation to pay 4.5% of their annual income (tax not inclusive) into the state coffers. The audit will cover the period 2015-2018.

To carry out the audit, TRB has invited tenders, both national and international firms competent in finance, accounting, auditing, economy and/or engineering in electronic communications to submit bids latest 9 December 2019.

The call put out by the regulator indicates that the firm which would be contracted by TRB will extract and consolidate; by category of revenue, financial figures related to the billing systems of the operators.

The firm will also examine supporting documents of billings and scrutinise the call records of MTN, Orange and Nexttel.

In addition, the job will entail analysing variance between sales revenue figures in the statistics and financial distribution of the different companies and what appears in their balance accounts. The auditing firm is also tasked with dissecting the gap between financial information from the billing system and what figures in the balance accounts.

Besides collecting information related to voice, data, mobile money, interconnection and sale of products like phones and modems, the firm will be tasked to study mobile money operations by the telcos and make comparisons with that of commercial banks which validate transactions.

Silvestre Noubissie, Chief of the Division of Communication and Cooperation at TRB said it is the first time such an audit is being carried out. "This action falls within our mission and we want to make sure the operators have not been playing games."

The audit is expected to last three months.