Maputo, Mozambique — Mozambique's publicly owned telecommunications company, TDM, has increased its domestic phone tariffs by 13.7 per cent, effective Sunday.
The cost of a three-minute local call is up from 1.205 to 1,370 meticais (18,500 meticais = 1 US dollar).
To this must be added 17 per cent Value Added Tax (VAT), which brings the true cost of a local call to 1,603 meticais.
The cost of a call within a 50 km radius now rises to 910 meticais a minute.
Calls made to a phone between 50 and 250 km cost 3,425 meticais a minute, and when the distance is over 250km the price rises to 5,480 meticais a minute.
Strikingly, it costs exactly the same to call from a fixed phone to a mobile phone within Maputo as it does to call from Maputo to Pemba in the far north of the country - 5,480 meticais a minute.
Seventeen per cent VAT must be added to all these figures to calculate the real price that clients would pay.
All long distance calls (or calls between fixed and mobile phones) are 50 per cent cheaper if made between 20 hours and 6 hours or at weekends.
No changes in the rates for international calls have been announced.
