Minister of Telecommunication Mohamed Choucair announced today that he is considering cancelling the 60 free minutes of local talk-time that postpaid subscriber get every month as part of setting the government budget for 2019.
Minister Choucair made that suggestion based on his own assumption that postpaid subscriber are wealthy people who can afford to pay additional fees on their bills. I’m not making that up as he really explained it to LBCI’s reporter..! Noting that the additional money generated from that move should make up for the decrease in revenue that Touch and Alfa have reported for the year 2018 (a decrease of $200 million from 2017).
Business people usually have a million ways to improve their offerings and their revenues at the same time and I’m sure increasing prices would never be on top of their list. This however doesn’t seem to be the case for Mohamed Choucair who did absolutely nothing for the telecom sector since he was appointed, and this doesn’t only show his lack of experience in the field, but also how desperate is the government to secure additional funds for the upcoming budget which is yet an additional proof of how bad is our monetary situation.
At a time where countries around us are making a progress everyday in the telecom field, we specialize in appointing people who excel at pulling us backwards. Ya3tina l 3afyeh.
