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Vol.
XXVIII No. 47
November
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Raising
FDI Limits in Telecom or
Rewarding
Law Breakers?
Prabir
Purkayastha
THE
governments policies on vital sectors such as telecom have less to do with
actual policies for the sector and much more on how to look at financing needs
of private capital. If we look at the priorities that the telecom sector should
have, we would have thought the priority should be for expanding telecom network
coverage and correcting the growing rural urban telecom divide. The other area
that requires focus is the withering away of telecom manufacturing, particularly
at a time when India offers the second largest market for telecom equipment in
the world. Instead, the finance ministrys response to the Left partys note
has little to offer except that unless we help the private licensees to sell
their cellular licensees to foreign companies, these companies will not be able
to expand. And for this, the finance ministry believes that the Foreign Direct
Investment (FDI) limits should be lifted.
Before
we get into the details of the finance ministrys response, let us address one
issue that the finance ministry has raised from the beginning and the media has
echoed: the need for FDI to expand the telecom network in the country. We will
also address the other issue that FDIs will come into the country only if FDI
limits are lifted.
INTERNAL
RESOURCES
The
finance ministry has stated that the requirement of capital in the telecom
sector is to the tune of $28 billion, a figure which, according to the finance
ministry, can be only met by FDI flows. The finance ministry also claims that if
such FDIs do not come into the country for the telecom sector, then it will have
to be financed out of our savings, leaving other sectors of the economy starved
of capital. The interesting omission from the finance ministrys calculations
is what is the actual surplus that the telecom companies are currently
generating. Surely the question of foreign capital and loans arise after we take
into account the surplus of these companies. After all, no company takes loans
or parts with equity if they can invest from their own surplus.
If
we look at the current surplus that the Indian telecom companies are generating,
BSNL alone has invested $14.7 billion in the last five years, almost
entirely from its internal surplus. If we also add MTNLs surplus and take
the next five years estimated investments of BSNL and MTNL, it is of the order
of $ 28 billion. In other words, the
public sector telecom companies from their own resources can invest the entire
$28 billion that the finance ministry talks about. In addition to this,
there is also the surplus of the private players, who have an average surplus of
at least Rs 10,000 crore ($2.2
billion) for the next five years. VSNL alone has a surplus of about Rs 4,000
crore. Certainly, Reliance, Bharati and the entire set of cellular companies
would generate another Rs 6,000 crore. And this is not all. The USO levy is 5
per cent of the revenue of the telecom companies. The current total revenue of
the telecom sector is Rs 66,500 crore. If we take the rate at which it is
growing and consider that 5 per cent of this will go into the USO Fund, we are
talking of another $1 billion which is to be invested in the telecom sector.
Totalling up these additional amounts, we have, in addition to the public sector
companies, an investment potential of $3.2 billion per year, i.e., another $16
billion in five years that can be invested in telecom expansion. This means that
the finance ministry is completely underestimating the amount of investments
that the telecom sector can make out of its own resources. The
total amount including public sector companies, the private players and the USO
levy is to the tune of $44 billion. And the finance ministry need not worry,
it will not starve any other sector of capital, this is all from what the
telecom subscribers will finance.
The
above figures are not surprising. Earlier, the Department of Telecom had
financed the entire telecom expansion without any budgetary support from the
government. In the last 5 years, the private and the public sector has invested
an estimated Rs 100,000 crore in the telecom sector. While the private companies
had to make an up-front investment initially, with a healthy and a fast
expanding customer base, they are now also generating significant surplus. The
figures are only surprising if somebody does not know the telecom sector. If the
earlier NDA government had not handed over VSNL to the Tatas, more money would
have been available for the public sector telecom companies to focus on the
crucial areas in telecom: rural and broadband connectivity.
FDI
LIMITS &
FOREIGN
INVESTMENTS
Even
though capital is not a constraint on telecom expansion, we can still lift FDI
limits if we believe that it would bring additional capital and allow the sector
to expand faster. The catch here is that there is no correlation between
receiving foreign investments and FDI limits. For example, in India, with a
49 per cent cap in place in 1994 and 1995, we had initially 32 joint ventures
for mobile telephony and 16 joint ventures for fixed telephony with some of the
worlds largest and best-known telecom companies, bidding for mobile and fixed
line licenses. Most of them have left, not because of FDI limits, but due to the
regulatory mess that we have described often enough in these columns, as well as
bursting of the Internet bubble.
We
have allowed 100 per cent FDI in Internet companies, yet we have no takers from
foreign investors. Even worse, the 100 per cent FDI limits have not helped in
fashioning a suitable broadband policy. Korea, in the same period, has converted
its almost all the Internet connections to broadband. Their costs are also 60
times lower than similar broadband connections in India. In India, instead of a
thrust on broadband connectivity, the NDA government handed over the public
sector Internet company VSNL to Tatas for milking and hoped that 100 per cent
FDI limits would automatically see broadband penetrate into India. A picture,
which has not changed radically, even after the announcement of the new
broadband policy by the ministry of communications.
RURAL
TELEPHONY
NTP
94 had argued that we need private capital for providing additional resources
for connecting all the villages by 1997 and provide telephone on demand. Even
after 10 years of NTP 94, which allowed private capital to come into telecom,
there are 70 thousand villages without telephones. The waiting list,
concentrated almost entirely in smaller semi-urban and mofussil
towns is still of the order of 4 million. The rural-urban divide is growing
wider, with Teledensity of 1.7 per 100 in rural areas as opposed to 19.7 in the
urban areas. The private players who were supposed to have brought in additional
capital for rural telephony have in fact preferred to pay the miniscule
penalties prescribed in the license than provide rural telephones. The private
players have provided only about 14,000 Village Public Telephones (VPTs) and met
only about 10 per cent of their license commitments.
The
existing telecom network coverage is concentrated on metros and larger towns,
with coverage of only about 20 per cent of the country. If we want to provide
rural telephony, the alleged purpose of NTP 94 and all subsequent telecom policy
documents, obviously we need to strengthen BSNL and provide a rapid disbursement
of the USO Fund. And we need to add some teeth to forcing the private players to
adhere to their license terms and conditions. Instead, the policy is to focus on
how to help the private players who have no intention of going to rural areas.
FDI
& THE CAPITAL FORMATION
While
the finance ministry is deeply worried of the impact on the capital formation in
the country if FDI is not allowed to be lifted in telecom, it seems to be quite
comfortable with the virtual demise of the telecom manufacturing sector in the
country. To the finance ministry, any attempt to support manufacturing in the
country is tantamount to protection, which will drive cost of services high.
What seems to have entirely escaped the finance ministrys attentions is the
huge balance of payments that the telecom sector will create if all the
equipment for this sector from handsets to telecom switches are
imported. A simple back of the envelope calculation will show that and
additional 150 million subscribers as the ministry is projecting means handsets
of the same number and outflows to the tune of $ 24 billion. If we add to this
the cost of switches etc., required for expanding the sector, we are talking
about an investment of another $14 billion. While the finance ministry is
worried about how to bring an inflow of about $ 11 billion from abroad, it is
completely oblivious to this huge projected outflow.
INCENTIVE
FOR
DE-INDUSTRIALISATION
There
are other consequences of not supporting manufacturing. The only long-term way
to bring down costs in the country is to provide incentives to manufacture
locally. Instead, we have high taxes for raw materials and intermediate goods
and low taxes on the finished products, very much in the colonial mode. This is
an incentive for de-industrialisation, which is precisely what is happening.
Currently, while the telecom market is booming, the premiere telecom
manufacturing company, ITI, in the country has turned sick. The finance ministry
dismisses the Chinese telecom model, which has based itself on indigenous
manufacture and is now storming the global market as infant industry
protection model. While the Chinese infant has now grown and taking on the
global telecom MNCs, the Indian infant seems to have entered old age and
terminal decline without stepping into adulthood! It is time we take a more
holistic look at the telecom sector and not just of the needs of a few
licensees.
We
will not repeat here the issue of national security and telecom, which we have
dealt with earlier. Suffice it to say, the finance ministry has virtually not
given any response to the Lefts Note on this except to assert that security
concerns are now obsolete. It has not responded to Lefts question on who
should be the better judge of nations security, the finance ministry or the
security agencies. And if the security agencies are wrong, we need to be told
why. Just blanket assertions to the contrary carry no conviction.
Finally,
the finance ministry has yet to explain why a violation of the 49 per cent limit
on FDIs, which both Hutch and Airtel seem to have done, should be encouraged by
changing the law. If either the letter of law or its spirit is violated, the
violator needs to be punished or the loopholes tightened. If instead, we
legitimise such violations, it sends the signal that the government itself is
not serious about law. In other words, break the laws that you do not like
and ask for regularisation later. The government will then argue that since the
law has been subverted, the right course, in order to make law breaking more
transparent, is to change the law!
