MTL owes Celtel, TNM, Macra K868m
by: Emmanuel Muwamba , 12/29/2004, 11:20:09 AM

The Malawi Telecommunications Limited (MTL) is owing other telecommunication service providers and the Malawi Communications Regulatory Authority (Macra) over K868 million, (over $8 million) Nation Online has established.
In a statement presented to representatives of Celtel, TNM and Macra at a meeting held at Macra House in Blantyre on Tuesday, MTL is said to be in debt of K431,130,11.85 to Telkom Networks Malawi (TNM). Celtel is owed K286,588,911.40 while Macra is owed K150,850,682.98 by the sole fixed telephone operator.
The meeting took about three hours but was held in closed doors when seated journalist were asked to leave. Briefing the press later, Minister of Information and Tourism Ken Lipenga noted the huge debt MTL is having has come as a result of the interconnection fee the operators agreed upon.
Lipenga said: “The main objective of the meeting was for me, on behalf of government and my ministry, to underline to all the parties the importance of speedily resolving certain difficulties that they are experiencing at the present time. The difficulties have to do with interconnection fees.
“But the bottom line is that there is some money owed particularly to operators such as TNM and Celtel and to Macra to some extent by MTL. And there have been a number of discussions by these parties to try to resolve these issues. Unfortunately, because they have not solved the problem the amount has been accumulating on a daily basis. So we decided that as government we have to come in to help in resolving the issue because it is important that these have to succeed.”
He added that the other reason was that “if these difficulties take too long to be resolved, then it may send a bad signal to other would-be investors”.
The minister attributed the rising of the figures to nonpayment by government and other service users of MTL, saying but the rule is not to pay the amount at the same go.
Macra director general Evans Namanja explained that tomorrow (Thursday) there will be a meeting of a subcommittee of the parties represented on Tuesday to “analyse the pros and cons which will submit to the main committee.” The main committee is expected to hold further discussions on January 12 next year.
Namanja said the interconnection fee is now at four cents to either party. Upon introduction of the connection fee in 1999, MTL was supposed to pay mobile phone operators 20 cents from eight by mobile phones. While mobile to fixed it was five cents.
In 2002, Macra made a ruling that the charge be reduced from 20 cents to eight while the five cents to fixed remained and February this year Macra made a ruling that interconnection be at four cents.
“We thought by doing so MTL would oblige, unfortunately nothing has been done.”