Tcil Bags $20m Overseas Deals

Telecommunications Consultants India (TCIL) has won two contracts in Malawi and Mauritius worth $20 million (approximately Rs 80 crore).

The contracts, concluded by TCIL chairman and managing director A S Bansal recently, are expected to take the telecom public sector unit's turnover towards the Rs 750-crore mark in 1997-98.

The $19 million (about Rs 74 crore) Malawi order is for setting up an external cable plant on a turnkey basis in two of the country's major cities, Lilongwe and Zomba.

To be executed over two years, the Malawi Posts & Telecomm-unications Corporation project is being financed by the African Development Bank. The Mauritian deal has been signed between TCIL and Mauritius Telecom. It involves setting up 33,000 telephone lines in rural areas of the island nation. The value of the project is estimated to be Rs 6 crore and is to be completed before October this year.

 

TCIL has plans of concluding contracts this year in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. Bansal had told Business Standard earlier that the orders being garnered by TCIL would increase its turnover approximately 50 per cent over the previous year. The company is targeting a turnover of Rs 1,000 crore next fiscal (1998-99).

TCIL has proposed a joint venture with MTNL to invest in basic telecom projects in the country. The proposal, to form a Rs 1,000 crore company, has been sent to the telecom commission, the apex decision-making nine-member body of the department of telecommunications (DoT).

The joint venture intends to roll out basic telecom networks in circles which do not have any successful bidders yet. Of the 20 notified circles for private sector entry in basic telecom services, only five operators have signed licence and interconnect agreements.

Another two are likely to do so early this year, while two operators who have cases pending in courts against DoT may also hammer out settlements taking the total number of circles with private operators to nine.

This leaves the TCIL-MTNL consortium the choice of 11 other circles.