Make profit or face share offload

To avert selling shares or getting external equity partners in Teletalk Bangladesh Limited, the post and telecommunications ministry has asked the state-owned company to make it profitable within this fiscal year (FY 2023-24), officials said on Saturday.
In default, Teletalk will be handed over to local or foreign investors for improving its services and making the company profitable as the ministry warned at a meeting at the Teletalk office in Dhaka last month.
State Minister for Post and Telecommunication Zunaid Ahmed Palak and Secretary of the ministry Abu Hena Murshed Zaman were present at the meeting.
Teletalk Managing Director AKM Habibur Rahman made a presentation on the latest condition of the company, including its income and expenditure.

"The ministry has directed us to take every possible step to make our company profitable. We have already taken some measures and some others are in the offing. We are hopeful about becoming a profitable entity within two years," said the Teletalk MD.
"Actually, we have to reduce our operating losses and boost revenue income by improving services," he told the FE.
"We have been upgrading our existing 5,661 sites across the country into 4G technology and will set up 3,000 more BTSs with upgraded technology to improve the services," he further said.
He added: "We are getting better responses from our existing customers after conversion of some BTSs into 4G. We believe that our penetration as well as revenue from the customers will increase as well," Mr Rahman said.
A ministry official said that since the government wants to offload the shares or get equity partners from local or foreign sources, it wants to see Teletalk a profitable venture. A profitable venture always attracts investments.
The state minister asked the company to stop providing free services to the private -and public-sector customers, said officials who attended the meeting last month.
He also instructed the MD to expand the network to all private and public universities across the country to bag more customers. He also stressed on introducing 5G technology and e-SIM for attracting more customers.
The company has also been asked to rent out additional spaces of the telecom ministry or its related offices to avoid additional expenditures.
In 2023, Bangladesh's private conglomerate Bashundhara Group proposed the ministry to become a strategic partner of Teletalk in a bid to improve the quality of services and generate more revenues.
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