Disbursement committee to utilise RTDF finally gets full shape

KATHMANDU:

The government has finally formed a committee that will utilise resources of Rural Telecommunication Development Fund (RTDF). This indicates that the long planned ICT development projects under financing from the fund will now go into implementation phase.

‘District Optical Fibre Project’, ‘Connect a School, Connect a Community’ and a project that intends to make one village development committee (VDC) of each development region ICT-friendly, are to be financed through the RTDF. The fund has around Rs 10 billion, which is accumulated from two per cent of annual income of each licensee of Nepal Telecommunications Authority (NTA).

An amendment to the Telecommunication Policy about two-and-a-half years ago had introduced a provision, under which only a

committee under coordination of NTA chairman reserves the right to make decisions to use RTDF. And the panel must also comprise three joint secretary-level members from National Planning Commission (NPC), Ministry of Finance (MoF) and Ministry of Information and Communications (MoIC). However, in the absence of NTA chairman, the committee was unable to get full shape until now.

MoIC recently formed the committee naming other three members in it after NTA Chairman Digambar Jha took office. After nearly two years of court case, Jha had joined the telecom authority two months back winning a case filed against his appointment.

According to MoIC officials, Gopi Nath Mainali, joint secretary of NPC, Ram Sharan Pudasaini, chief of corporation cooperation division of MoF, and Kabi Raj Khanal, joint secretary of MoIC are the three members in the RTDF disbursement committee.

Responsibilities of the committee include project selection, funding through RTDF and monitoring of such projects. “With the formation of the committee, we will be able to carry out projects like ‘Connect a School, Connect a Community’ and making one VDC of each development region ICT-friendly, as a pilot project,” said Achyuta Nanda Mishra, assistant spokesperson of NTA. As per the annual budget of NTA, these two projects will be provided Rs 110 million from the RTDF in the current fiscal year.

‘Connect a School, Connect a Community’ is a project which aims to extend broadband connection to school and community level through public-private partnership initiative. NTA has also been facing criticism for not being able to use the fund for district optical fibre programme.

The telecom authority from 2009 has been planning to build optical fibre backbone infrastructure and connect all 75 districts of the country utilising the RTDF money. Going by the original plan, the district optical fibre programme was supposed to be completed within this month.

The authority officials said that they will be able to award a contract within the current fiscal year after making necessary revisions in the annual budget approved for the current fiscal year.

Source: THT