Govt’s efforts in telecom sector overlooked by auction revenue: Ahluwalia

11 Jan 2013 Evaluate

As per the Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia, too much focus on spectrum auction has overshadowed the achievements of the government in the telecom sector, which the government has done by establishing a telecom policy that is transparent, widely accepted and provided a boost to growth in telecom.

Ahluwalia’s statement comes in response to a question on low realization from the recent spectrum auction. The government had set a target to garner Rs 40,000 crore for spectrum during 2012-13 to bring down fiscal deficit but it has been only able to realize Rs 9,407.64 crore from the auctions that were conducted in November 2012.

By adding further he said, ‘focus on how much the auction will achieve is not important. What is key is that the government... switched to what is visibly a totally, transparent method of allocation. What is important is that telecom sector is poised to move forward.’

On fixing the reserve price for auction Ahluwalia said, there is no rule to fix reserve price. It is actually going to be fixed by the auction and if we choose a reserve price that lead to the failure of the auction, we would have made a mistake.

Meanwhile, TRAI had recommended around 10 times high spectrum price at around Rs 18,200 crore for 5 Mhz of pan-India spectrum as compared to Rs 1,658 crore that companies last paid in 2008 for pan-India business.

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