A Financial Analysis of Mobile Money Services
With limited reporting by mobile network operators (“MNOs”) on the financial performance of mobile money businesses, the paper develops a financial reporting framework to indentify (and quantify) operating costs associated with delivering mobile financial services to unbanked populations in emerging markets. The framework is based on a review of relevant literature and an analysis of the financial reporting of conventional money transfer businesses.
Taxation of the Telecommunications Sector: A Focus on Policy Issues and Considerations in Taxation of Mobile Money in Uganda
With the growth of the telecommunications sector in Uganda has come the emergence of a vibrant sub-sector, mobile money (transfer of money through mobile phones). This service enables almost instant sending and receiving of money across the country and with some operators even out of the country. Today, the service has almost 20 million subscribers in Uganda and 39 percent of the country’s GDP moves through this service. In 2013, Local Excise Duty on money transfer at 10 percent was introduced as an attempt by the country’s tax body to tap into this lucrative sector and indirectly reach the ever burgeoning but elusive informal sector. This tax however has been condemned as distortionary of the industry, regressive in its incidence and part of the general discriminatory nature of the taxes against the telecommunications industry in Africa. This research seeks to assess the exact nature of this tax, its impact on the mobile money service as an industry and make recommendations on how it can be improved.
Full-scale measurements of SO2 gas phase concentrations and slurry compositions in a wet flue gas desulphurisation spray absorber
Abstract Two measurement campaigns were carried out at ENERGI E2's Asnaes Power plant, unit 5. The unit has a capacity of 620 MW e and is equipped with a wet flue gas desulphurisation (FGD) plant employing a counter-current spray absorber with five spray levels. In the first campaign, the power plant was firing Orimulsion ® with 2.85 wt% S resulting in a flue gas concentration of SO 2 exceeding 2000 ppmv. In the second campaign, the fuel applied was a low-S blended coal and the SO 2 concentration in the raw gas was around 400 ppmv. A novel probe for in situ sampling of gas phase concentrations in wet FGD spray absorbers was developed and applied for measuring axial profiles of the SO 2 gas phase concentrations in the absorber. The expected decrease in SO 2 concentrations along the height of the absorber was found in the spray section (from height 26.5 to 36.2 m) whereas the SO 2 concentration above the holding tank and below the gas inlet was quite low probably due to long local residence times in the region. Horizontal variations, due to somewhat different flow conditions near the column wall were investigated and the SO 2 concentrations were found to be higher near the wall. Measurements at different gross loads showed that the SO 2 gas phase concentration at a given position inside the absorber was roughly linearly related to the L/G ratio in the measuring interval. Turning off one of the lower spray levels, while burning coal with low S content, did not lower the overall removal efficiency of the absorber. However, the SO 2 gas phase concentration inside the lower part of the absorber was increased by a factor of 2–3. Measurements of slurry pH at different positions showed a decrease of approximately 0.5 units from the upper to the lower part of the absorber. The full-scale measurements provide a detailed set of experimental data for validation of mathematical models of a wet FGD spray absorber.