Kenya's Safaricom warns against more tax rises on money transfers

* Says any further tax rate hikes to be counterproductive

* Warns county governments against imposing levies on telecoms

By George Obulutsa

NAIROBI, Sept 12 (Reuters) - Kenya's leading mobile phone operator Safaricom cautioned the government against further rises in excise duty on mobile money transfers, saying there was a risk new county-level administrations would add to the tax burden.

Chief Executive Bob Collymore said on Thursday futher tax increases would put a service that has deepened financial inclusion, particularly in rural areas, beyond the reach of the poor.

The company said in May that a 10 percent tax imposed in late 2012 on transfers using its M-Pesa mobile service had forced it to absorb costs of 400 million shillings ($4.6 million) in the 2012/13 financial year to shield consumers from the full burden.

"Mobile money is still relatively new and Government should be wary of putting any additional tax burden on the customer, and in particular on the poor who rely on M-Pesa more than any other," Collymore told the company's annual general meeting.

Collymore said more than 28 shillings out of every 100 shillings charged to a telecoms customer went to the taxman, making Kenya's telecoms taxes amongst the highest in the world.

He said he worried that could rise yet higher if county governments, which were introduced this year, targeted the telecoms sector to raise revenues.

"This is an industrywide area. We have seen one county which attempted to charge fees for putting fibre (optic cable) on the ground," he said. "We are urging governors and local county governments not to take a short term approach because operators will inevitably deprioritise those counties."

The county governments have been allocated funds from the national budget to pay for projects but will have to meet shortfalls by raising their own revenues.

No government tax officials could immediately be reached to comment on prospects for increases in excise duty.

Safaricom, 40-percent owned by Britain's Vodafone, posted record pretax profits of 25.5 billion shillings ($304.30 million) last year. M-Pesa accounted for 18 percent of revenue, a share expected to climb to 20 percent within two years.

Mobile money transfers are used by workers in cities to send money to rural families and increasingly are also a means to pay utility bills or buy goods in shops such as groceries.

Collymore said Safaricom was still negotiating access to the 4G spectrum with the telecoms regulator.

Other telecoms operators in Kenya are a unit of India's Bharti Airtel, Essar Telecoms' Yu and Telkom Kenya, owned by France's Orange. ($1 = 87.6000 Kenyan shillings) (Editing by Richard Lough and Anthony Barker)

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Firefighters holding line against massive California wildfire

n">(Reuters) - Firefighters battling a colossal California wildfire that has eaten away at the Yosemite National Park backcountry managed overnight to largely stem the spread of the flames, authorities said on Sunday.

The fire sent heavy smoke on Saturday into the popular touristic Yosemite Valley, an area famed for towering granite rock formations, waterfalls and pine forests, obscuring views of popular landmarks on a holiday weekend at the end of the summer tourist season.

Despite footage from cameras posted on the park's website showing continued smoky conditions in the park, no further road closures within Yosemite were reported, and containment lines held steady at 40 percent.

"We have been able to hold the line. It's just trying to figure out how to wrap this thing up and put a bow around it," said fire incident spokeswoman Leslie Auriemmo, adding that there were no fresh closures in the park.

The Rim Fire had charred nearly 223,000 acres by early on Sunday, mostly in the Stanislaus National Forest which spreads out from Yosemite's western edge although the blaze has blackened about 6 percent of Yosemite's wilder backcountry.

The Yosemite Valley has been open to visitors since the fire broke out two weeks ago, but smoke began spreading to the area on Friday ahead of the Labor Day holiday weekend that in the past years has seen the park fill with visitors.

The smoke from the fire, whose footprint now exceeds the area of Dallas, was expected to at least partially clear on Sunday afternoon as winds shift, fire managers said.

Some 4 million people visit Yosemite each year, most going during the peak months of June through August. Some 620,000 normally visit the park in August alone, but due to the fire, attendance has dropped.

Close to 5,000 people are working to put out the fire, including firefighters from agencies across California and nearly 700 specially trained California prison inmates.

Among the landmarks potentially in the path of the blaze are two groves of the park's famed sequoia trees.

"We are working very hard to protect that. All the lines are in place so it doesn't go into those groves," Auriemmo said.

Firefighters have carried out controlled burns around the groves to clear away debris that could otherwise fuel a fire to such an intensity that it dangerously licks at the trees' crowns.

Lower-intensity fires, on the other hand, play a vital role in the reproductive cycle of the tough-barked sequoia, many of which bear the scars of past wildfires, by releasing the seeds from their cones and clearing the soil in which they germinate.

The blaze has edged out the 1932 Matilija wildfire in Ventura County to become the fourth-largest California wildfire on record, according to figures from the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

The cause of the fire remains under investigation.

(Editing by Cynthia Johnston and Sandra Maler)

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Kerry Won't Rule Out Action Against Syria if Congress Votes No

On Meet the Press on Sunday, Secretary of State John Kerry explained President Obama’s sudden shift in favor of seeking Congressional approval for military action against the Assad regime in Syria. Obama, said Kerry, figured that the United States would have “greater moral authority and greater strength” with Congressional approval, and would demonstrate to the world that the country was “united.” He continued: “He didn't think it was worthwhile acting and having the Syrians and a whole bunch of other folks looking at the United States arguing about whether or not it was legitimate or should he have done it or should he have moved faster.”

Kerry then said that Obama didn’t decide to go to Congress because of low levels of support for action against Syria. He dodged the question as to whether Congress would vote yes on authorization to use force: “We don’t contemplate that Congress is going to vote no.” On ABC, he said, “We are not going to lose this vote.”

Source: Reuters News
Leaders in the U.K. and France weigh in on the path toward military intervention in Syria, after President Obama announces his push for congrssional support. Nathan Frandino reports.



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