Dominguez: DOF keen on ‘setting parameters right’

Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez III has said it is the priority of his department to have a selection process that will ensure that the third telecommunications player to be chosen can effectively compete in the telco market.

Dominguez said he “find(s) the proposed process fails to set up parameters that will ensure that the third telco has the capability, both financial and technical, to compete in the long term.” The proposed process used “committed level of service” as the main criteria in the selection of the third player.

He added, “I’ve expressed my concerns on the proposed process as I find the pre-qualification criteria as being weak, and I think that scoring should not be based on ‘commitments.’ You know, the beauty contest in the past resulted to frequency hoarding and those companies failed to improve service. They just made money by flipping assets government owns. I don’t want that to happen again.”

When asked about the next steps, Dominguez answered that on the Department of Finance’s end, they are currently evaluating what pre-qualification criteria, like financial and previous telco experience, can be applied to improve the selection of the third player.

“Government should not forget what the task at hand is. The mandate of the President was not only to bring in a third telco player, but more importantly, to ensure that its entry will result to rendering of better services to the consumers at the lowest possible cost,” Dominguez said.

As to when the criteria will be approved, he said that they hope to be done with the task by Friday. /