Business, Featured
By Benprince Ezeh
THE Nigerian Communications Commission, NCC, has reiterated its commitment to creating an enabling environment for competition among operators in the telecom industry. Umar Danbatta, Executive Vice Chairman and Chief Executive Office of NCC, said this would enable the commission to provide qualitative and efficient telecommunications services throughout the country.
Speaking at a workshop on ‘Operators’ Capacity Building on the Framework for Accounting Separation for the Nigerian Communications Industry’ in Lagos, Danbatta, who was represented by Josephine Amuwa, Director, Policy, Competition and Economic Analysis, said that in exercise of its regulatory functions as provided for the under the Nigerian Communication Act, NCA, 2003, the commission has considered the need for implementing an Accounting Separation Framework, which outlines the key principle and guidelines required for the preparation and submission of Regulatory Financial Statement, RFS.
“The commission’s key objectives in implementing the AS framework is to provide an environment which fosters open and transparent financial reporting within the industry and also to assist in ensuring that charges for telecommunication services are cost based, transparent and non-discriminatory.
“Assist the commission in the monitoring of Operators; compliance with other regulatory obligation, identify and prevent any undue discrimination or practices that substantially lessen competition such as cross-subsidization, margin squeezes.
“Avert probable issues of regulatory overlap arising from the convergence in technology and service offerings that may extend as we have seen recently, to the statutory space of other regulators,” she said.
According Amuwa, the operators are expected to also reap strategic benefits of gaining a better understanding of unit costs, cost drivers and profitability of different services from the preparation of RFS.
“We understand that operators within the Telecommunications Industry already prepare and file financial statements as required by the law, reporting at the corporate level present’s aggregate information which may not provide sufficient detail to the Regulator for analysing the performance and competitiveness of the markets within the industry.
“The Accounting Separation Framework issued by the NCC provides a comprehensive set of policies and guidelines for generating detailed RFS, this will enable us independently analyse revenues, costs and capital employed across different businesses, product and services of operators.
“These will further provide the Commission with a basis for judging the success or otherwise of its existing regulations such as interconnect obligation, tariff and regulation,” she said.
– Dec. 10, 2019 @ 17:35 GMT
Tags: NCC assures operators of Condusive Environment
