Exclusive: Interaction with COAI DG on the upcoming Union Budget and on National Telecom Policy
- 6 years ago
As we all know that the Government is all set to introduce Union Budget for 2018-19 on Thursday, the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) representing the telecom sector has made some recommendations for improving the financial health of the sector. In an interview with GizBot, COAI Director, General Rajan Mathews revealed some of the major submissions.
"There are five to six critical element that we wanted to bring before the Government, firstly we wanted them to reduce the license fee as well as the spectrum usage charge because both of these caused significant erosion in the financial health of the industry," he said.
He further adds, "we have asked for reducing the duties on 4G LTE equipment, third one is to set up dedicated financial institution that will give specialised loans to the industry for long time projects, fourthly we are hoping GST rate should bring down to 5 percent and we also talked about the duties that have been imposed on imported component for optical fibre."
"There are five to six critical element that we wanted to bring before the Government, firstly we wanted them to reduce the license fee as well as the spectrum usage charge because both of these caused significant erosion in the financial health of the industry," he said.
He further adds, "we have asked for reducing the duties on 4G LTE equipment, third one is to set up dedicated financial institution that will give specialised loans to the industry for long time projects, fourthly we are hoping GST rate should bring down to 5 percent and we also talked about the duties that have been imposed on imported component for optical fibre."