Pakistan offers an ideal environment for telecom sector: PM
Pakistan offers an ideal environment for the telecom sector: PM
DUNYA NEWS REPORT (HUMAIRA SAJID)
ISLAMABAD – The Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in a meeting with Jean Yves Charlier the Chief Executive Officer of VimpelCom, the world’s largest telecommunications provider at the PM House said Pakistan offers an ideal environment for telecom sector as the country leads in cellular phone subscribers.
Prime Minister Muhammad Nawaz Sharif has said that international business community’s confidence to invest in Pakistan has been restored due to the incentives-based transparent policies of the government. He said this while meeting Mr. Jean for the first time after the recent merger of Warid Telecom.
The Prime Minister said that government’s clear policies have especially revolutionized the Telecom sector and successful launch of 3G and 4G in the recent past is a testimony to this.
Our government believes in open and transparent business policies so that both local and foreign investors are further motivated to explore the business opportunities in Pakistan. “We are encouraging the telecom companies to expand their outreach to far-flung areas of the country so that majority of the masses benefit from the technology,” he added.
Describing Pakistan’s telecom industry as “promising and vibrant”, the CEO of VimpelCom, parent company of Mobilink, appreciated the business-friendly policies of the present government. He said the tele-density in Pakistan was one of the highest in the region, which makes the country one of the favorite destinations for foreign investors.
The meeting was also attended by Minister of State for Information Technology Anusha Rehman Khan and senior government officials.
In a separate meeting with Finance Minister Ishaq Dar, Mr. Charlier said that since its inception VimpelCom had invested $5 billion in Pakistan and delivered services to 38 million customers. He said the merger of Warid Telecom with Mobilink, if approved, would open a new window of opportunity for enhancing investment and employment generation in Pakistan.
Ishaq Dar, appreciating the economic contribution of VimpelCom, said Ms Rahman had come up with a comprehensive telecom policy which not only encouraged foreign investment but also envisaged to extend IT and telecom facilities to the underserved and far-flung areas of the country.
Early in January 2016, the CEOs of Telecom companies declared the issuance of the long-awaited Telecom Policy 2015 as a landmark achievement and a forward looking document. The cellular mobile operators (CMOs) appraised leadership skills of Minister of State for IT Anusha Rahman and said in accordance to the newly established policy Pakistan will re-emerge on international arena. The industry also assured to work in tandem with government to achieve the vision of Accelerated Digitization, envisioned in the policy.
“By and large the new policy is very positive for the industry and we look forward to a level-playing field that will further boost the sector’s growth,” said Omar Manzur, Director Corporate Communication at Mobilink; the largest CMO by subscriber base.
Professor Tim Unwin UNESCO Chair, IT Secretary Azmat Ali Ranjha and Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) Chairman Dr Ismail Shah highlighted the issues in a meeting concerning economic growth and social inequality and also workings of PTA in creating new mobile applications for disabled and handicapped persons.
The IT secretary stated that there has been an exponential growth in different areas over the years including prominent increase in broadband users, implementation of E-office suite at the IT Ministry, 40 per cent growth in IT remittances and nine USF projects in underserved areas have also been launched at a cost of Rs 20 billion.
Pakistan Telecommunications Authority (PTA) mentioned that the telecom sector of Pakistan is one of the sectors which is open for foreign investment by the Government of Pakistan. This sector remained the talk of town in the last year when new international renowned players entered in the telecom market of Pakistan. PTA stated in report that US$ 5 to 8 billion Foreign Direct Investment would come to the cellular mobile and fixed line telephony in next 3 to 5 years. Mobilink GSM, one of the top telecoms in Pakistan said that they are now in the process of raising $200m from export agencies to help fund their $400m investment programme for next year.
On the other hand, Telenor and Warid have planned to invest over US $ 500 million and part of this investment would be financed by foreign sources while rest would be finance from local sources including the reinvestment of their profits. All six cellular operators planned investment of over US $ I billion every year in next three years in their roll out plan. Besides cellular operators, government has also divested 26% PTCL shares to a UAE based company and fetched over US $ 2.5 billion as FDI.
This huge flow of FDI in Pakistan telecom sector certainly creates positive impact on domestic economy. Regulating the FDI properly, PTA and State Bank together might help achieve multiple effect of this investment in true sense.
