Thursday 28 Mar 2024
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KUALA LUMPUR (July 7): Axiata Group Bhd’s 63%-owned subsidiary, edotco Group Sdn Bhd, said its Myanmar operations are largely unaffected by the political upheaval there, but the company is not putting more money into the country for now.

“The challenge for Myanmar today is more on the repatriation of funds because essentially getting the US dollar is quite a challenge in the country. But apart from that, operationally things are running well and in fact in terms of getting approvals from the government, it is much faster than what we've seen in the past," said  edotco group CEO Mohamed Adlan Ahmad Tajudin.

“For us, we'll continue to sustain the business over there but we are not going to put much more investment at least at this point in time until there is clarity in terms of how [the situation] is going moving forward,” he told reporters at the launch of the edotco Sustainability Blueprint and Report 2021 on Thursday (July 7).

Mohamed Adlan said that apart from some areas where it is probably not safe to operate, most of edotco’s operations in Myanmar are not affected.

“But from our perspective, we are not putting more cash into the country. Our operations in Myanmar today are self-sustaining so we are continuing, maintaining our operations using internal cash,” he added.

Meanwhile, in Sri Lanka, Mohamed Adlan said there is a need to reprice in terms of rentals from the company's customers there.

“Given the depreciation of the currency there, what we are seeing today by 50% to 60%, given that some of the rentals are in Sri Lanka rupee, there is a need to revise our pricing in the market today,” he said.

According to edotco’s website, the integrated telecommunications infrastructure services company has a portfolio of over 3,000 towers and managed sites in Myanmar and over 1,000 towers in Sri Lanka.

On a related note, Mohamed Adlan said that as one of the major partners for Digital Nasional Bhd (DNB) in terms of assisting for the rolling out of 5G towers in the country, edotco hopes to deliver nearly 1,000 towers to DNB by the end of the year.

“The beauty about our industry is that when we actually receive the orders, we then build the infrastructure. So all of our capex is backed by a certainty of long-term cash flow," he said.

According to Mohamed Adlan, the cost varies from as low as US$20,000 to as high as US$50,000 per tower depending on several factors.

Edited ByS Kanagaraju
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