CULIBRK: 2013 is year for investment for Telekom Srbija

(Predrag Culibrk)

Predrag Culibrk, acting CEO of Telekom Srbija, announced the company's ambitious plan to implement about RSD 20 billion worth of investments and enhance the quality of service in 2013.

He noted that the company's 2012 business results were going to be somewhat better than it had been expected in September last year, when he was appointed Telekom’s CEO.

- The company’s profit will be approximately RSD 10 billion, which is much below the profit in 2011 - Culibrk said in an interview with the business magazine Cord.

In order to repurchase 20 percent of own shares from Greece's OTE, Telekom took out a EUR 470 million loan, which significantly affects its operations - the company's total debt grew to EUR 700 million last year.

- The current position of our company will significantly burden its liquidity in the following few years. All this makes our huge costs even bigger with the dinar depreciating, and we are going to face difficulties in trying to obtain funds for new investments and a more aggressive market approach - said Culibrk.

According to him, liquidity is the company's biggest problem at the moment because it is of vital importance to secure funds for new investments, which are necessary in such dynamic sector like telecommunications.

Telekom is still the operator with the largest number of mobile telephony subscribers.

RATEL’s 2011 reports showed that Telekom had lost its dominant position in terms of total revenue generated by mobile telephony, Culibrk said and added that that market was one of the most competitive in Serbia, illustrating that with the fact that mobile telephony prices in our country were among the lowest in the region.

- The investments that we plan to make in 2013 are bigger than those made over the past few years and are estimated at close to 20 billion dinars. This business plan has already been approved by the statutory bodies, and we have already started implementing it - he said and stressed that the company would focus on the improvement of the quality of services.

The share that telecommunications sector has in the national GDP is almost 6 percent. Culibrk said that given that we lived in the information era and in a knowledge economy, a developed telecommunications sector was an important prerequisite for accomplishing goals and reducing the gap between developed and emerging countries. Also, a developed telecommunications sector exerts a positive influence on the overall business environment, he added

According to him, the sector's further growth in Serbia is closely tied to future macroeconomic trends in the country and how fast we overcome the economic crisis.