The Minister of Telecommunications and Postal Services Dr Siyabonga Cwele welcomes the Telkom’s annual financial results for the year that ended in March 2016.
“It is most pleasing to see the strong performance Telkom has achieved in such a competitive national and global environment. We welcome that Telkom has performed steadily over the past four years, especially given that there were suggestions that it be sold.
The current share price is a demonstration of the correctness of Government’s decision to keep its investment in the company. The board and management team have done well to change the fortunes of Telkom in this period. But, more work still needs to be done,” said Minister Cwele.
He said the transformation at Telkom provides useful pointers on how to change the fortunes of State-Owned Companies (SOC). “Government and other shareholders decided to give Telkom a strong Board of Directors, who, in turn, appointed a capable management team to improve the performance and sustainability of the company.
It is noteworthy that the Board and management did not request a capital injection to change the fortunes of Telkom. As shareholders, all we gave Telkom was a level of autonomy while ensuring accountability of this SOC,” he said.
In the period under review Telkom spent R6 billion in capital investment in areas that include fibre, LTE and mobile, IT systems, maintenance and rehabilitation. Minister Cwele said he is pleased that some of this investment went into rehabilitating infrastructure in rural towns.
Minister Cwele is also happy that Telkom, during the year under review, had established an open access network, Openserve, that offered same priced services to all, including Telkom’s competitors. The strong financial results demonstrate the viability of open access networks and their contribution to company sustainability.
They also support Government’s view that a speedy implementation of open access networks can lead to price transparency and lower the cost to communicate,” said Minister Cwele.
“We are happy that once again we will get a substantial dividend from Telkom. While we know that the dividend will go into the National Revenue Fund, it is our view that we should start to re-invest a substantial amount in the rollout of modern ICT infrastructure,” said Minister Cwele.
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