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Enacy Mapakame and Michael Tome
State-owned mobile network operator, NetOne, has started preparations for privatisation after embarking on a turnaround strategy aimed at enhancing operations, a senior executive said.
Upon assuming office, Finance and Economic Development Minister Mthuli Ncube, said fast tracking privatisation of State-owned enterprises would cover NetOne along with POSB and TelOne as part of institutional reforms meant to achieve growth and development outlined in the Transitional Stabilisation Programme (TSP).
Public enterprise reforms are espoused in Government’s Transitional Stabilisation Programme (TSP), an economic blueprint expiring this year.
In a wide ranging interview, NetOne chief executive officer Lazarus Muchenje, indicated an inter-ministerial committee had been created to handle the privatisation process.
“Discussions are taking place at shareholder level,” said Muchenje adding the company was working on enhancing its viability and was on path to becoming a world class telecoms company.
He said his firm had set out the back to basics approach, which is premised on four key strategic pillars encompassing quality network, quality distribution, quality contact centre and a quality balance sheet all intended to form an efficient business.
“NetOne has been making strides in terms of transition to a sound organisation, and we set out to clean up what we could, improve what we could so that whichever partner that comes along finds the company performing competently.
“We are out of loss making, back to profitability, so whichever partner is coming will be attracted to us now than a couple of years ago,” he said.
“So currently, our day-to-day work is mainly on improving the organisation and preparedness for the potential suitor,” said Muchenje.
NetOne recovered from a $77-million-dollar loss to post a $10 million profit in 2018 showing, a greater improvement in terms of viability.
As part of initiatives to improve operations in the firm, NetOne has embarked on a programme that matches demand with available infrastructure.
In this instance, the telecoms firm has redeployed some of its 4G infrastructure to areas of high demand thereby enabling quality network that has seen improvement in data speed and availability. This initiative has already seen improvements in capacity utilisation of the already existing infrastructure.
In its blueprint, NetOne, says it is aiming to optimise allocation of capital to make sure that network is improved from mediocre to a premium network, a move that has seen network availability reaching a height of 99,5 percent availability in recent times.
“It was difficult to like a NetOne line two years ago because our network was not delivering, it was not a quality network, so without additional funds and staff we set out to look at the basics, like improving base station uptime.
“We aligned allocation of our infrastructure with demand, we moved 4G base stations to match our demand, if they are down the time must be minimal, to minimise congestion as speed of data must be fast. We just set out to fix those to ensure better quality,” he said.
The company has also developed robust distribution network for its products particularly agent lines, merchant codes, card-less merchant purchases, biller codes, short-term loans (Tsaona), SIM cards, and Zip-It through the ZimSwitch platform.
NetOne has been on an aggressive trajectory and Postal and Telecommunications Regulatory Authority of Zimbabwe (POTRAZ)’s third quarter report for 2019 shows OneMoney grew by 27 percent to 428 529 from 335 132 subscribers.
Subsequently, its active mobile subscriptions grew by 10, 6 percent from 2 752 458 to 3 042 930 signifying a total gain of 1,4 percent of the market share in Zimbabwe.
The gain represented the overall growth in active mobile subscriptions and was mainly attributable to OneMoney.
Adoption of mobile money has been continuously improving as an alternative to making payments given the cash shortages the country is facing.
Online Reporter