MultiChoice Angola to launch a new VAT-inclusive DStv package to help combat pay-TV subscriber churn as household spending remains under pressure in the country's tough economy.

MultiChoice Angola will launch a new DStv bouquet that will soon be made available and that will already include value-added tax (VAT).

Mercado reports that, according to insider sources, MultiChoice Angola, plans to launch a new VAT-inclusive DStv package with the pay-TV operator looking to combat churn by helping Angolan households in the country's tough economy.

MultiChoice Angola is a franchise division in that country run by Jembas Assistência Tecnica, running the DStv pay-TV service from MultiChoice Africa.

According to Mercado, new consumer market research in Angola has revealed that besides just the lower, middle and upper classes, Angolan households are and can be more specifically subdivided and targeted by companies according to disposable income.

MultiChoice Angola has now apparently put together a DStv package that is supposed to help prevent DStv subscribers from cancelling, with some of the most-watched TV channels combined into a 3300 Kz (R139) subscription package.

The new DStv package will be price-placed between the two lowest and seven highest-priced packages. It will bring the number of DStv packages available in Angola to 10.

DStv Angola is the first African country to announce that MultiChoice will be hiking monthly subscription fees from early 2018.

Angola is the first African country where MultiChoice is announcing a DStv subscription price hike for 2018 with DStv subscribers in the West African country who will be paying more for their monthly DStv subscriptions from sometime in the first quarter of 2018.

DStv Angola didn't yet announce the specific monthly price increases for the various DStv packages but is the first country to signal just before Christmas that DStv fees will be increasing in the new year.

MultiChoice Africa says the price hike in "inevitable" with Eduardo Continentino, MultiChoice Angola CEO saying the DStv subscription fee increase is mainly due to "exchange losses and inflation" due to the weakened kwanza currency.

Angola's Valor Economico is reporting that DStv Angola is doing better after 2016 that Eduardo Continentino is describing as "a very bad year". More than 60% of DStv Angola's subscribers are based in the country's capital, Luanda, considered one of the most expensive cities in the world to live in.

In 2017 MultiChoice Africa decreased DStv subscription fees in several African countries since August including Uganda, Kenya, Zambia and Ghana saying "we recognise that our customers are living in tough economic times", although MultiChoice South Africa increased the DStv monthly subscription fees for South Africans in 2017 who saw no similar decrease.