Telecom firms said that the government needs to provide them a level playing field in public projects and lower levies for ‘ease of doing business’. They also sought permits in a time-bound manner, reported Economic Times.
“Start-up firms have raised their issue before government representative demanding that they should be given opportunity to participate in public projects,” COAI Director General Rajan S Mathews told PTI yesterday after a round table on ease of doing business in telecom sector. “They said that tender conditions ask for high turnover and experience which they are unable to meet,” he added.
Telecom Secretary Aruna Sundararajan and Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion Secretary Ramesh Abhishek represented the government at the meeting that was co-hosted by Invest India and India Mobile Congress.
Mathews said start-ups also demanded that low cost finance be made available to them and the government help to ease financial compliance rules. He further said that established player like Vodafone and Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) raised issues of telecom operators related high levies and low return.
The draft National Digital Communications Policy 2018 proposes to address most of the telecom operators issue to achieve USD 100 billion investment, but operators want to know by when it will be implemented, Mathews said. Sundararajan, he said, assured the companies that the issues of telecom sector will be addressed in time bound manner by 2022 as mentioned in the draft.
