OAG‚ NTA lock horns
KATHMANDU:
Office of the Auditor General (OAG) and Nepal Telecommunications Authority (NTA) are at loggerheads over Rs 14 billion that has remained unutilised with the telecom regulator. The supreme audit institution wants the sum to be transferred to the government coffers.
Even though OAG directed NTA to send the resources to the government treasury few weeks back, the latter has refused to comply with the directive stating that it would be against the provision of the Telecommunications Act 1997. The size of the fund that was instructed to be transferred includes resources of the Rural Telecommunications Development Fund (RTDF) and income of the telecom regulatory body.
“No one is above the law and we are just following the rules that are in place,” said Digambar Jha, chairman of NTA. According to him, the government should first amend the Act — which states that RTDF resources have to be utilised in expansion of telecom service in rural areas — before laying claims to the fund.Each licensee of NTA contributes two per cent of their annual income from their services to the RTDF, as required by the Act. So far, Rs 10.22 billion has been accumulated in the fund, which also includes bank interests.
NTA said that the size of RTDF started to grow after 2010, while its income began to rise only after 2013. NTA’s income includes collection of licence fee and licence renewal fee and licence transfer fee.Contribution to the RTDF started to grow remarkably since last five years mainly due to increased income of telecom companies from cellular services. Similarly, NTA’s income started to increase from fiscal year 2012-13, after the two major telecom companies — Nepal Telecom (NT) and Ncell — started to pay their GSM mobile licence renewal fee of Rs 20 billion in installments of Rs 2.5 billion each fiscal year.
NTA’s income, however, does not include money earned through collection of royalty and frequency fees, which is channelled directly to the government coffers. The telecom authority recently had also held discussions with the Ministry of Finance (MoF) over OAG’s direction.
Laxman Aryal, joint secretary at MoF said that they would pass on the explanation furbished by NTA to OAG regarding need of amendment to the Act to transfer the resources. “NTA has shown its commitment to use the RTDF money,” he added.
However, in 17 years since its establishment, NTA has so far spent merely 2.6 per cent of the resources accumulated in RTDF for extension of telecom services to rural areas. From the fund, Rs 265.69 million had been paid to NT and Rs 2.95 million to Subisu Cable Net for their involvement in service expansion to rural and remote areas.
Jha explained that plans to utilise RTDF resources had not progressed effectively due to procedural hurdles and the post of NTA chairman remaining vacant for nearly two years.
As there was no specific provision on utilising income of NTA, in its report for fiscal year 2012-13, OAG had also underlined the need for the Ministry of Information and Communications (MoIC) to make clear provisions in the Act and Regulations regarding utilisation of the resource reserved with NTA. However, both MoIC and NTA are yet to decide on what to do with income of NTA and make needful amendments to the Act
Source: THT
