Telecom minister lays emphasis on in-house equipment manufacturing

In his first press briefing after taking charge as the telecom minister, Ravi Shankar Prasad laid out top priorities of the government -- indigenous manufacturing of telecom equipment, improving tax structure and security of the nation.

Laying emphasis on electronic equipment manufacturing, he said that this will generate employment to the tune of 2.80 crore jobs.

The consumption of electronic goods in the country is such that the demand is expected to increase to $400 billion by 2014, and in few years time the import of electronic bills will surpass the fuel bill.

As a second priority the minister laid down alignment of national optic fibre network.

By 2014-15, Prasad expects 50,000 gram panchayats to be connected by National Optic Fibre network, another 1 lakh by 2015-16 and by 2016-17 the rest of the one lakh will be connected.

"So that every panchayat should have e-education, tele-medicine etc. Government program should be delivered in panchayats. We have taken the issue very seriously," he said.

However, he denied to reply to the key issues of the sector such as spectrum sharing, improving the mergers and acquisition scenario or even about the next round of spectrum auctions.

Talking about the litigations affecting the health of the sector, the minister said that the finance ministry was already looking at it and the telecom department will provide its full cooperation on the issue.

British telecom firm Vodafone is facing a multi-billion dollar tax dispute with the government and is currently going through a conciliation process. Another foreign firm - Finland-based Nokia - too is fighting its tax dispute with the Indian government.

"We fully agree to cooperate with them (finance ministry) for early redressal of those cases. It is in our party's agenda, our government wants a clear stable stable fiscal regime," said the minister.

He stood firm on the NDA government's stand to avoid retrospective taxation and said that whether there could be a resolution or not, but in principle retrospective taxation should be avoided.

Talking about the increasing participation of Chinese equipment manufacturing firms in the country, and potential security threat to the country, the minister said, "I want to assure the nation that whosoever are the electronic manufacturers, India's security will always be of paramount."

Chinese equipment manufacturing firms such as Huawei and ZTE have faced some tough time in India in the last couple of years on the behest of alleged involvement in cyberespionage.

The minister has already seen presentations from equipment makers such as Samsung and Nokia.

The ministry which is plagued with controversies saw favoritism to some firms during the tenure of former telecom minister A. Raja.

Prasad also said that in his tenure all the decisions will be taken on merit. "The days of lobbying and favoritism is over," he said.

The minister also said that the agenda to improve the situation of the state-owned BSNL and MTNL will be on a priority basis. "Both these organisation have not received the attention they needed. They need proper infrastructure support and my government is committed to give them that."

In a brilliant example of remote monitoring, the minister also said that he has proposed to set up a system in his chamber from where he can gauge towers of these state-owned firms.

A network operating system will be installed in my chamber, through which I shall be able to monitoring the towers of BSNL and MTNL ... which are working which are working which are not,"he said.

The circles in which the towers will be found dysfunctional will be questioned.

The government is also keen to start a new program of postal banking services across the country. India has 1,55,000 post offices across the country against mere 80,000 in China. "RBI had applied for licence that is on hold, we are evaluating that."