The Hindu : Business : Bharti chief for hike in FDI cap in telecom

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Friday, Nov 19, 2004

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Business

Bharti chief for hike in FDI cap in telecom

By Our Staff Reporter

COIMBATORE, NOV. 18. The Chairman and Group Managing Director of Bharti Enterprises, Sunil Bharti Mittal, has underlined the need for hiking the cap on foreign direct investment in the telecom sector from 49 per cent to 74 per cent as it is poised for a massive growth in the next five years. He was talking to reporters on Tuesday after inaugurating the additional main switching centre of the Airtel Mobile in Coimbatore.

Mr. Mittal said the number of mobile phone subscribers had now grown to around 45 million, overtaking the landline subscribers. This would go up to 100 million in the next two years and reach 200 million in the next five years. He estimated that the investment needed to propel this growth would be around $25-30 billion.

He felt that such a huge amount could not be mobilised from the domestic financial institutions. The country did not have that much of a money and foreign investment was necessary if the telecom sector is to reach out to the rural and fast expanding market. Asked whether Airtel was looking at acquiring companies abroad, as had been done by the Reliance group and VSNL, he said, "We are now looking at no international acquisitions". He said he would like to concentrate on the domestic market and the company had planned to expand its network to Orissa, Bihar, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and the North East.

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