The Hindu Business Line : Delhi is hot choice for foreign telecom players

KARNATAKA and Andhra Pradesh may be attracting the largest investments in IT sector; but when it comes to telecom, Delhi seems to be the favourite destination for foreign investors.

Close to 25 per cent of all the FDI proposals approved between January 2001 and December 2003 have been for Delhi. While the share of State-neutral FDI approved is larger, Delhi leads the race when it comes to State-specific FDI proposals for the telecom sector.

According to the data available with the Department of Telecom, the Government has cleared 67 Delhi-specific FDI proposals worth Rs 2,938 crore over the three-year period. Maharashtra comes a distant second with 56 FDI approvals worth Rs 952 crore accounting for about 8 per cent of the total. Surprisingly, Himachal Pradesh is the close third in the list with investments worth Rs 810 crore approved over just three proposals. Tamil Nadu is fourth with FDI approvals worth Rs 702 crore spread over 16 proposals.

Of course, FDI proposals worth Rs 4,711 crore have been cleared wherein the destination State was not mentioned. While such proposals account for 41 per cent of the total FDI approved in telecom, in terms of absolute numbers only 37 such cases have been given the nod, compared with Delhi's 67.

IT hotspots Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh have got State-specific FDIs worth Rs 476 crore and Rs 0.24 crore respectively out of the total of Rs 11,371 crore for the entire country.

Telecom analysts said that the DoT data come as no surprise since Delhi is the most lucrative telecom market in the country with over 2.5 million fixed-line subscribers and more than three million mobile users. Large multinational communication giants such as Hughes, Nokia, Motorola, Ericsson and Alcatel have set up their centres in Delhi.

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