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Stakeholders have emphasized to distribute the royalties raised for the use of frequencies used in telecommunication to the provinces and local levels. In a program organized by the Nepal Economic Journalists Association (SEJAN) on Monday, stakeholders said that telecommunication frequency royalties should be distributed as they are a natural resource.
Judd Garung, a member of the National Natural Resources and Finance Commission, informed that on 8th June 2079, he recommended to the Ministry of Finance to set up a divisible fund and distribute it. But he said that the Ministry of Finance has not yet proceeded with any process.
'Various international experiences and Nepal's policy arrangements have made it clear that telecommunication royalty is a natural resource,' Gurung said, 'The commission's own study has also concluded that it is a natural resource and we have recommended that it be distributed to the Ministry of Finance.' Engineers Khimanand Kandel and Bhuvan Paudel, who studied telecommunication royalty on behalf of the commission, also said that it is a natural resource. "Clause 4, Schedule 6 and 9 of Article 69 of the Constitution and the Intergovernmental Finance Management Act 2074 show that telecommunications royalty is a natural resource," Kandel said, "The decision made by the Supreme Court in 2070 also explained that it is a natural resource."
Paudel also said that telecommunication frequencies are naturally available natural resources . "As many items as radio, TV, X-ray, phone, mobile that run through wireless means, they run on radio frequency," Paudel said, "other sectors are making low income from radio frequency." They are earning the most from radio frequencies used by telecommunications.'
Shivraj Adhikari, Vice President of National Planning Commission, said that it should be clear whether royalty distribution is dividend distribution or compensation. Commenting that the royalties paid by mining and hydropower projects are compensations, the official said, 'It is necessary to study how much the impact of radio frequency has reached while distributing royalties.'
Likewise, the Secretary of the Commission, Kiranraj Sharma, said that the Commission has recommended to the Ministry of Finance to distribute the radio frequency on the basis of impact, protection and use. "Policy arrangements have arranged for equitable distribution of natural resources," Sharma said, "It is recommended to distribute them on different bases such as area, population, mobile users."
The Commission has recommended allocation of 30 percent to geography, 25 percent to population, 15 percent to mobile users and 30 percent to Basic Trans Receiver Stations (BTS). The Telecommunication Authority has been collecting annual royalties of around 3.5 billion rupees. 90 percent of the total royalty is raised from Ncell and Nepal Telecom. In the
program, 16 journalists, including 14 people who received fellowships from Sejan and two people from Sangha, were awarded fellowship completion certificates (graduation) for reporting related to public finance management at the local and regional levels. The fellowship recipients are Mukesh Chaudhary, Gokarna Dayal, Tekraj KC, Om Shahi, CP Khanal, Sudeep Bhandari, Reena Thapa, Durga Rana Magar, Keshav Samarpan Subedi, Sunil Shrestha, Hadish Khudar, Mohammad Alam, Junu Bhattarai, China Thapa and Ranjit Tamang and Achyut Puri from Sangh. Among the applications received from the participants in the provincial level public finance management training, the best application was selected and awarded the fellowship.
