NEPAL

STATEMENT BY MR. SHANKER P. KOIRALA
SECRETARY, MINISTRY OF INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATIONS

Mr. Chairman,
Secretary General, ITU
Your Excellencies,
Distinguished Head of Delegates and other Delegates,
Ladies and Gentlemen.

At the very outset, on behalf of the Nepalese delegation, I would like to congratulate you, Mr. Chairman, on your assumption of the Chairmanship of this very distinguished and august gathering. On behalf of my delegation, and on my own I would like to express our full confidence on your able and dynamic leadership.

It is indeed a matter of great pleasure for us to be amongst this august gathering here today in this beautiful country with glorious past and a land full of many historical civilizations. On behalf of my delegation, I would like to express our sincere thanks and appreciation to the government of the Republic of Turkey for the excellent arrangement of this event and generous hospitality accorded to us. I bring with me the good wishes and greetings from the people and Government of Nepal and as you all may be aware that Nepal has recently undergone a historical political change through the popular mass movement that not only restored the fully democratic polity but also ended the decade long internal insurgengy resulting in a permanent peace and stability.

It is with deep gratitude that I express my appreciation to the Secretary-General of ITU, Mr. Utsumi and his entire team for their untiring efforts in preparing and managing this grand conference. Moreover, we also join hands with other delegates in commending the remarkable achievements that ITU achieved in the past eight years under the able leadership of Mr. Utsumi.

We believe that Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sector plays a pivotal role in changing the socio-economic landscape of countries like Nepal, a country with one of the most difficult terrains in the world. In the coming years, emergence of knowledge-based economy is not going to be confined to developed world, and developing countries must be able not only to embrace arrays of new ICT products and services, but also to take benefits from the on-going technological shift. Almost a decade has passed since we started using the word "digital-divide", but the time now has come to assess whether we have done enough to minimize the gap. Unprecedented demand of telecom services in general and mobile services in particular even in remotest parts of Nepal with very low per capita income population, clearly indicates the need to accelerate the process of narrowing down the divide.

Mr. Chairman,

Although the trend in developed world is moving towards "convergence" of all kinds of ICT services like fixed telephony, mobile services, broadband internet services and television/video, for developing countries like Nepal, the priority is still a robust, reliable and affordable telecom infrastructure. Hence, we are trying our best to do "balancing act" of fulfilling ever-increasing demand for high-tech services from urban population and to serve vast majority of rural population covering the remotest parts of the country. Presently, we have just reached tele-density of 6% (50% of which is mobile) for a population of 26 million. Although the fixed telephone and mobile subscribers in the past five years increased with annual average growth rate of 12 and 100 percent respectively, demand of telecom services in suburban and rural areas are increasing almost exponentially in recent days. The resulting demand-supply gap is still a big challenge for the government.

Having said this, Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to inform this august gathering that Government of Nepal has already adopted liberal, investment-friendly and competition-oriented regime in the ICT sector, which has resulted in the establishment of three private operators with almost 80% foreign equity involvement. However, in spite of this liberalized competitive environment, we, in Nepal feel that this esteemed organization ITU could have done more in developing countries like Nepal by giving technical assistance to lessen the complexities created by fast-paced technological innovations, accompanied by drastic changes in pricing structures and above all by need to adopt appropriate business strategy considering future trends like Next Generation Networks, triple-play/quadruple-play services, 3G/4G mobiles and relatively recent shift of IP technology to more mature and more diversified network infrastructure. We feel that past policy of world-bodies like ITU to assume ICT sector as purely "business sector with no need of intervention" should be re-visited and in coming days, ITU should take more roles in giving technical advise and consultations to developing countries in order to enable them to cope with fast-paced innovations and developments in ICT sector.

We believe that deliberations and selection of ITU senior management team in this conference will be an important mile-stone to steer the whole of mankind into a more inclusive, more transparent, more equal, more satisfying life with more and more use of ICT sector in the daily life of common people of the world. We wish the conference a grand success.

I wish you all the success !

I Thank You All !