KATHAMNDU: Even as there is huge rise in income and profit, the Nepal Telecommunications Authority (NTA) is unable to make better use its resource for development in telecom sector. The government record shows that the telecom regulator has reserved profit of Rs 13.34 billion.
The profit is maintained from collection of fees including from issuance, renewal, transfer or sale of operating licences of telecom companies, internet and network service providers. These charges fall under income of the NTA but other payments by service providers such as royalty and frequency fees go directly to the government coffer as revenue.
For annual expenditure of ranging below Rs 50 million a year, NTA’s income will continue to increase further in the current fiscal year too. According to the annual report 2012-13 of the Office of the Auditor General (OAG) for last fiscal year, NTA’s profit has touched Rs 13.34 billion including Rs 958.3 million from corresponding year 2011-12.
OAG in its report had also underlined in the need of the Ministry of Information and Communications (MoIC) making clear provision in Telecommunication Act and Regulation regarding utilisation of the resource reserved with the NTA. The authority’s income had started to increase magnificently from last fiscal year after the two major telecom companies—Nepal Telecom and Ncell started to pay their GSM mobile licence renewal fee of Rs 20 billion in instalment.
Last year, the government had introduced a provision based on which the two telecom companies have to pay renewal fee Rs 2.5 billion annually for up to eight years. NTA officials said that since the income had started to grow significantly only from last fiscal year, there was no any specific plan on how to make better use of such profit.
A senior official at MoIC said even though there were many possibilities to utilise the fund for ICT sector development, they are yet to work on them. “Failure to use the Rural Telecommunication Development Fund (RTDF) for five four years has kind of discourage to come up with any plan,” he added.
NTA has around Rs 8 billion in the RTDF targeted for extending telecom services to rural parts of the country. However, despite a plan to use it in taking optical fibre link to all 75 districts for last five years, the resource has remained unused for multiple reasons including issue of possibility of infrastructure duplication and no chairman at the NTA for long time. RTDF is a fund in which NTA licences have to contribute two per cent of their income.
According to the NTA officials, since RTDF was set for telecom development in rural sector, the reserved profit could be utilised for purposes such as strengthening of physical infrastructures and regulation of the NTA, introducing internationally accepted services—ICT for disaster management and early warning system and ICT for climate change monitoring. Or the government can come up with a policy for overall development in ICT sector with a mandate to use NTA saved fund.
The income of NTA can also be utilised the profit in implementing high tech quality of service (QoS) monitoring, making ICT services accessible to people with disabilities and increasing use of ICT services in rural areas, according to Ananda Raj Khanal, officiating chief of NTA.“There is also possibility of NTA outsourcing third party companies to implement projects related to ICT services,” he added.
The profit is maintained from collection of fees including from issuance, renewal, transfer or sale of operating licences of telecom companies, internet and network service providers. These charges fall under income of the NTA but other payments by service providers such as royalty and frequency fees go directly to the government coffer as revenue.
For annual expenditure of ranging below Rs 50 million a year, NTA’s income will continue to increase further in the current fiscal year too. According to the annual report 2012-13 of the Office of the Auditor General (OAG) for last fiscal year, NTA’s profit has touched Rs 13.34 billion including Rs 958.3 million from corresponding year 2011-12.
OAG in its report had also underlined in the need of the Ministry of Information and Communications (MoIC) making clear provision in Telecommunication Act and Regulation regarding utilisation of the resource reserved with the NTA. The authority’s income had started to increase magnificently from last fiscal year after the two major telecom companies—Nepal Telecom and Ncell started to pay their GSM mobile licence renewal fee of Rs 20 billion in instalment.
Last year, the government had introduced a provision based on which the two telecom companies have to pay renewal fee Rs 2.5 billion annually for up to eight years. NTA officials said that since the income had started to grow significantly only from last fiscal year, there was no any specific plan on how to make better use of such profit.
A senior official at MoIC said even though there were many possibilities to utilise the fund for ICT sector development, they are yet to work on them. “Failure to use the Rural Telecommunication Development Fund (RTDF) for five four years has kind of discourage to come up with any plan,” he added.
NTA has around Rs 8 billion in the RTDF targeted for extending telecom services to rural parts of the country. However, despite a plan to use it in taking optical fibre link to all 75 districts for last five years, the resource has remained unused for multiple reasons including issue of possibility of infrastructure duplication and no chairman at the NTA for long time. RTDF is a fund in which NTA licences have to contribute two per cent of their income.
According to the NTA officials, since RTDF was set for telecom development in rural sector, the reserved profit could be utilised for purposes such as strengthening of physical infrastructures and regulation of the NTA, introducing internationally accepted services—ICT for disaster management and early warning system and ICT for climate change monitoring. Or the government can come up with a policy for overall development in ICT sector with a mandate to use NTA saved fund.
The income of NTA can also be utilised the profit in implementing high tech quality of service (QoS) monitoring, making ICT services accessible to people with disabilities and increasing use of ICT services in rural areas, according to Ananda Raj Khanal, officiating chief of NTA.“There is also possibility of NTA outsourcing third party companies to implement projects related to ICT services,” he added.
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