ISLAMABAD: While acknowledging that the government holds the ownership of the Pakistan Telecommunication Company Ltd (PTCL) with the majority of shares, IT and Telecom Minister Shaza Khawaja has admitted that subsidiary Ufone is not sharing its loss-making balance sheet with the government.

“Ufone is operationally under Etisalat. Therefore, the government is not responsible for its constant loss-making,” she said while talking to the media at a conference titled ‘5G and Beyond: Shaping the Future of Connectivity’.

The minister was asked about the reasons for continuous losses faced by the state-owned Ufone while other telecoms, including Zong and Jazz, witnessed a significant jump in profits in 2024.

Ms Khawaja added that since the operations of PTCL and Ufone were with Etisalat, the IT ministry was not responsible for its financial health. However, she said that the Government of Pakistan owned PTCL and Ufone was a subsidiary of PTCL, but she added that Ufone’s balance sheet was not provided to the government.

The minister said the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) should provide the answer to Ufone’s weak financial standing. Incidentally, the minister also declined to respond to the query that there was no member of the IT ministry on the Ufone board and referred the question to the secretary of IT, who confused the Ufone board with the PTCL board.

5G auction

The PTA organised the conference in collaboration with the telecom regulator of Malaysia and Nokia Pakistan.

Addressing the conference, Ms Khawaja presented the argument against auctioning the 5G spectrum, saying that it increases telecom companies’ business costs.

This perspective aligns with the view that high spectrum costs can be passed on to consumers, potentially slowing down the adoption of 5G technology and hindering the implementation of relevant infrastructure development due to financial constraints.

She stressed that Pakistan could learn from the experiences of other countries that have already launched 5G so that the same mistakes are not repeated.

Published in Dawn, February 18th, 2025