Lack of consensus keeps NBTC budget up in the air
Play
The National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission's two industry committees have been unable so far to agree on the watchdog's budget.
An NBTC source said the telecom committee viewed that the two panels should separately use their own budget derived from regulatory fees in their respective sectors. Since the broadcasting committee has yet to gain any such fee income, the telecom panel would lend part of its budget to its broadcast counterpart.
But the broadcasting committee disagrees with this idea, arguing that both committees should be able to access the NBTC’s overall regulatory fee income.
The source added that the NBTC’s 11 commissioners might have to vote to decide the issue.
The NBTC’s budget subcommittee has yet to finish reviewing the commission’s 2012 budget. The watchdog ordered it to review the budget to keep it in line with the estimated income from regulatory fees, but also to ensure that the review will not affect the NBTC’s operations, said Takorn Tantasit, secretary-general of the commission.
The watchdog has estimated it will see fee income of about Bt3.91 billion this year, versus budget requests by its units totalling Bt5.836 billion.
Of the total estimated fee income, Bt2.243 billion is expected to be from telephone-number allocation charges, Bt1.456 billion from telecom licence fees, and Bt112 million from telecom frequency utilisation permits.
Of the total, the NBTC has already spent Bt300 million during its first four months in existence.
Of the total budget requests, more than Bt563 million is for office administration, about Bt1.686 billion for strategic missions, more than Bt334 million for operations of regional offices, Bt1.257 billion for broadcasting committee operations, more than Bt1.769 billion for telecom committee operations, Bt100 million for emergency affairs, and Bt125 million for two related funds.
As part of the budget request for broadcasting operations, Bt180 million would be for trial broadcasting of the terrestrial digital TV system, Takorn said.
The budget subcommittee has already cut the budget for broadcasting operations to Bt800 million and that of telecom operations to Bt700 million.
Takorn said that this year the watchdog would not have any fee income left to pass on to state coffers, given its broadcast responsibilities in addition to telecoms. The NBTC’s predecessor, the National Telecommunications Commission, mainly focused on the latter. Like the NBC before it, the NBTC has to return pass unused fee income to the state every year after covering expenses.
The NBTC, which employs about 1,000 staff, got off the ground last October and has yet to issue any broadcasting licences.
