A proposal to cut international phone call termination tariff by 50% is unlikely to get through as the government machinery viewed against the recommendation by Bangladesh Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (BTRC).
The approval to the proposal in reducing the rate from $.03 to $.015 per minute, which is estimated to cause an annual loss of Tk1,100 crore to the national exchequer, would however depend on Finance Minister AMA Muhith.
A summary on the proposal the finance ministry prepared yesterday would soon be placed before the minister for approval, officials said.
They said the ministry is against the proposal and suggested the telecom regulator to go through due technical process to protect the illegal call termination and help save from the monetary loss, according to the summary.
BTRC had sent their recommendation to the post and telecommunication ministry at the end of last year, before referring it to the finance ministry recently.
Industry insiders believe the recommendation has been forwarded backed by “powerful political connections.”
Earlier in a set of recommendations, BTRC had also suggested the government to reduce the call termination rate along with another proposal for changing the revenue sharing structure – reducing the government’s share from existing 51.75% to 40%.
With the same recommendation, BTRC also claimed that at present 3.5cr minutes international calls were generated a day and it had estimated the loss of Tk1,073 crore based on this count. But the finance ministry summery signed by the finance secretary claimed: “There is no statistical base on BTRC’s recommendation whither it is anticipatory.”
They also raised question to BTRC, the termination rate was $.06 per minute in 2008 and reduced to $.03 in 2009, but was there any improvement in illegal call termination or not? BTRC submitted no response in this regard as noted in the finance ministry summery.
One the other hand, though BTRC is claiming present call of 3.5 crore minutes, but industry insiders said at least 5 core minutes of international calls are being generated now. In this count, the government would incur annual loss of around Tk1,500 crore.
They said incoming calls generally increases up to 9 crore minutes a day during the Eid and other festivals.
The summery also noted that the telecom regulators of the neighboring countries share anything about the call termination rate. Here VoIP Service Provider Association (VSPA) claimed that the neighboring countries call termination rate is three to eight times higher than Bangladesh. VSPA convener Rabiul Karim claimed, the international call termination rate in Sri Lanka is $.09 while it is $.095 in Nepal. In Pakistan, it is $.088 and Maldives is the highest with $.25 per minute.
“International call is considered as export earning in every country, but our decision makers are against that,” he told the Dhaka Tribune.
The BTRC proposal recognised that lowering the call termination charge and the government’s share will result in a revenue shortfall of Tk1,073 crore – from Tk1,851 core earned from the IGWs and ICXs last year to Tk777 crore.
Though finance ministry doesn’t have raised any legal question about changing the revenue sharing structure, but Barrister Aneek R Haque, a Supreme Court lawyer, told the Dhaka Tribune: “The revenue sharing structure has fixed through a public auction and BTRC cannot violate a public auction decision.”
Aneek, who had held the auction of IGWs in 2008, said by changing these decisions the BTRC had destabilised the whole sector.