ISLAMABAD (APP) - Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz said on Wednesday that government’s deregulation policy in the telecom sector had created a competitive environment and was benefiting consumers through reduced tariffs and improved services.

“The government introduced wide-ranging reforms in the telecom and the sector today is a role model for many developing countries,” he told leading telecom leaders and experts from Asia Pacific countries.

Representatives of 23 member countries, four associate members and 102 affiliates are attending the three-day session of the general assembly of the Asia-Pacific Telecommunity (APT).

Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz told the participants that tele-density in Pakistan has grown from 4.5 per cent a few years ago to 17 per cent and was increasing.
The number of mobile-phone users has gone up to 19 million and the country’s cellular market was the fastest growing after China, he added.

The prime minister also highlighted the continuity and transparency in the government policies and referred to the auctioning of two cellular licences that fetched country a total of nearly 600 million dollars in terms of fee. He recalled that the country’s economy was in a shambles when President General Pervez Musharraf took over.

But the comprehensive reforms and the policy of liberalization deregulation and privatisation initiative six years ago pulled the economy from the dire straits and put it on the path of higher growth, he added.

With 8.4 per cent growth last year, Pakistan was the second fastest growing economy after China, the prime minister said and added the government was targeting 6 to 8 per cent growth during the next five years.

The prime minister said that while the agriculture sector was still a life-line for many countries, telecom was the highway to development and the backbone of future growth. However, he said, the growth in telecom sector had to be overall as no country, even with the best potential, could leverage its full potential individually.

Referring to the government’s overall strategy, he said, deregulation, liberalization and privatization were the hallmark of the country’s economic policies.

“The government believes it has no business to be in business and should rather work as a facilitator by creating an enabling environment for the private sector,” he added. Vis-a-vis privatisation and deregulation, he said, there were many apprehensions over the policy but the outcome proved everyone wrong.

He cited the example of the telecom sector where people feared that policy of deregulation would lead to higher tariffs.

But, he added, the policy rather created a competitive environment and reduced tariffs through prudent regulation.

The prime minister, however, stated that while there had been a lot of achievements, there were also some mistakes.

In this regard, he referred to a fault in the country’s only under-sea cable a few months ago that disrupted entire internet and digital connectivity with the world.
But, he assured that it would never happen again as the country was opening a new under-sea line next month and had also laid a fibre optic cable to the border with India to have additional connectivity.