AMMAN — Head of the
Lower House Finance Committee Mohammad Al-Saudi is forming an investigating
subcommittee, comprising members from the Finance Committee, to investigate the
return of JD37 million to telecommunications companies by the
Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (TRC), which “lacked a clear
justification”. Key figures in the subcommittee include deputies Mohammad Fayez
and Firas Ajarmeh; more members might be added in the coming days.
اضافة اعلان
According to an
Al-Rai News report, the Jordanian telecommunications sector generated JD75.2 million
during the first nine months of 2021, representing a 26.8 percent increase over
the same period of 2020.
MP Saudi, who
requested the formation of the committee to investigate this issue, told
Jordan
News: “The TRC has been collecting approximately JD3 million on an annual basis
from prominent telecommunications companies. For the past 12 years or so, the
TRC has been returning these amounts to these companies, at a total of around
JD37 million.”
Member of the
investigation subcommittee Omar Naber told
Jordan News: “There is an agreement
that has been signed by the TRC and the main telecommunications companies, and
it stipulates that 1 percent of revenues generated by these companies shall go
to the TRC.”
Article 2.2 of the
agreement reads: “The licensee shall pay to the TRC an annual license fee based
on a percentage of the operating revenues arising from its licensed activities.
The percentage shall be determined by the TRC, but shall not exceed 1 percent
of such revenues. The annual license fee shall be recovered from all licensees
in order to recover the costs of the TRC in regulating the Jordanian
telecommunications and information technology sector.”
“While the license
agreement does allow the TRC to return the funds to the telecommunication companies
if it does not spend that money, I cannot help but ask why the TRC is choosing
not to spend this revenue that it collected from these companies,” Naber said.
“When we asked the
TRC for an explanation on why they are returning these amounts, they said that
it is because the
Ministry of Finance has not raised the TRC’s annual budget,
and this prevents it from being able to spend the funds collected annually from
the telecommunications companies as part of its budget,” Naber added.
“I am skeptical
about this, because the TRC could simply ask the ministry to raise its budget
[by the collected amount]. Some consider this to be a misuse of public funds,
and further investigation is needed,” he said.
The matter has
posed a challenge to Lower House Finance Committee, in Saudi’s view, because
“we have a responsibility to extensively analyze the general budget, and at the
moment, we need every single dinar, because there will be many institutions who
will outline their financial needs to us in the coming weeks”.
“Telecom companies
have been profitable for some time now, and they are by no means financially
strained. The TRC has a legal right to spend the revenue that it collects,”
Saudi said.
The full scope of
the situation will become clearer after discussions surrounding the 2022
general budget are concluded, he said, which might take “until the end of
February”. He also said that the investigating subcommittee is currently
preparing “the text and logistics” to deal with the subject of the TRC and the
funds it has remitted to telecom companies.
Read more National news
.jpg)
.jpg)
