AT a press conference held Tuesday at its Fort and Barrack Streets, Kingston, Georgetown headquarters, Digicel Guyana’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Gregory Dean maintained that Digicel’s main issue is still liberalization. Dean said that Digicel Guyana would like to know what the future of the telecommunication sector is, since Digicel believes that liberalising the sector was more important to any “Digicel versus Guyana Telephone and Telegraph Company (GT&T) battle”.
Deen said, “I think it is difficult for us to dispel the battle when we believe there are sinister moves being made aimed at harming Digicel’s long-term development in the country. Additionally, there are blatant lies being told about Digicel.
“For us, the main issue is still liberalization, and late last year, legislation was posed; due to the late intervention of GT&T, we still don’t know what were the issues and concerns with the previous legislation.”
Dean, however, noted that GT&T’s CEO, Yog Mahadeo has confirmed that GT&T was in talks with the government aimed at achieving liberalization; and in terms of what was said last week, it was just another publicity stunt aimed at influencing the future of that legislation.
He said, “For us, GT&T is painting themselves as some kind of victim in ensuring they have some form of protection in terms of what we considered to be an open playing field. And we don’t see why there should be any protection for GT&T. We don’t consider GT&T to be a victim, and we don’t see why they are painting themselves to be a victim to delay liberalization, or to achieve some kind of protection, when there should be a fully liberalised and open sector.”
Dean added that while Digicel may agree that the legislation which was withdrawn was not a perfect legislation, it was at least fair because it provided the same terms and conditions for all players. But all Digicel wants is that whatever legislation is put before Parliament and passed into law must have the same provisions for all players in the market.
He said, “We can’t see any legislation where there are moves to protect one provider against the other provider, and we think the time is right for the government to clear the air on the timeframe for liberalization. And additionally, we think there should be a clear statement that says ‘the aim still remains to provide a level playing field for all players, in which they are subjected to the same terms and conditions. We think anything other than that is basically a monopoly by another name in protecting the other, especially when persons are claiming victim status when they are not.”
The Digicel Guyana CEO yesterday added that Digicel takes objection to reporting its financial information, since it has the same statutory requirements as GT&T. He pointed out that the main requirements are to provide monthly management accounts to the Public Utilities Commission (PUC), which includes details on financial performance, profits etc; and once the year is completed, Digicel also sends fully audited financial accounts as GT&T does.
Dean said, “I don’t understand why we have this recurring theme that Digicel somehow operates under different statutory requirements to GT&T. The only difference is that GT&T additionally sends statements to the government, which is a shareholder to the company. So why should they not report to that shareholder, since we report to our shareholders on our performance as well. We don’t see why there seems to be this ongoing campaign to say that Digicel has a different statutory requirement.”
He explained that Digicel is in a very competitive field, where information technology is important to their competitors as it is for GT&T, but they choose not to discuss their financial statements publicly; but in terms of all their statutory requirements, they are happy to abide by those.
Dean told the press conference that in terms of taxes, Digicel is also subjected to the same tax regime as any other company in Guyana, but in addition, based on the legislation in terms of corporation taxes, Digicel is still subjected to 45% tax rates in Guyana as GT&T, and pays regular taxes to the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) yearly, same as GT&T.
He said, “We have no special arrangement with the government apart from our licence to operate in Guyana; and in terms of spectrum fees, Digicel incurs similar fees as GT&T. Since 2007, there hasn’t been a clear, defined charge for spectrum fees, but we were engaged in discussion over a year now for changes in the spectrum fees, but there haven’t been any changes.”