Thailand - TOT and CAT asked to tally amendment damages

[bangkokpost] TOT and CAT Telecom have been asked to assess the financial damages they have incurred as a result of amendments made to their concessions with private operators.

Executives of the state telecom enterprises met yesterday with a fact-finding committee set up by the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) ministry to look into the concession changes.

Pol Col Suchart Wong-ananchai, the committee chairman, said it was looking into amendments made to mobile telephone and satellite concessions in light of the Supreme Court ruling that Thaksin Shinawatra abused his authority while prime minister to press for changes that helped affiliates of Shin Corp, which he founded and later sold to Temasek Holdings of Singapore in 2006.

However, the government has also been looking into other amendments made over the past 10 to 15 years, which benefited other companies besides Shin, at the expense of TOT and CAT.

The State Enterprise Policy Office has estimated that past concession amendments with private operators such as AIS, Thaicom, True and TT&T have caused the state damages of up to 138 billion baht.

Pol Col Suchart said committee members had not reached a conclusion on exact financial damages because both TOT and CAT have to take into consideration various aspects of business in the period after the amendments were made.

He acknowledged - as some private operators have also argued - that some of the amendments helped promote faster growth in the industry as a whole, and thus the state and the private sector benefited.

He cited the reduction in revenue-sharing payments to TOT by mobile market leader AIS to 20% from a range of 25-30%. While TOT received a smaller share of revenue, the prepaid customer base increased substantially, benefiting both sides.

He said, the committee also discussed concession amendments made for mobile operators DTAC and True Move, which bypassed the private public joint investment law process. Members believe that the amended concessions should not be invalidated but should be revised and made them correct.

He said the committee would assure fairness for both state telecoms and private operators, but whether the ministry and the government would agree with its findings was a different matter altogether.

TOT and CAT asked to tally amendment damages