Privatising BSNL and MTNL not on anvil: Ravi Shankar Prasad

Union Information Technology and Communications Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said Friday that there is no proposal to privatise public sector telecom giants BSNL or MTNL.

Responding to supplementaries during the Question Hour in the Rajya Sabha today, Prasad said the government is making all efforts to make these PSUs financially sound.

He described the public sector as important for healthy competition.

Prasad also said mobile rates in India are among the lowest in the world and added that the Indian mobile sector is growing.

Last year, during an interview with a business daily, Prasad had acknowledged that both BSNL and MTNL were loss-making state-owned telecom service providers, and he was determined to ensure a performance turnaround as had been done by the Vajpayee-led government for Coal India.

He also maintained that the previous UPA regime had made a mess of the two PSUs by not providing them with requisite infrastructure support for four to five years.

Both of these units have been posting losses for the last four to five years, and have a miniscule market share of just eleven percent.

There is no time frame at present for turning around BSNL and MTNL, he said then.