MTN Rwanda cuts its investment by 55%

MTN Rwanda has said that it will slash its total annual investment by 55 percent to $45m (Rwf25.6 billion) this year. “There’s no need to invest heavily in building capacity and coverage every year, what we did in 2009 can serve in 2010 and what is required now is to maintain what we built last year,” the company’s CEO, Khaled Mikkawi, told Business Times in an interview.

Friday, February 05, 2010
Khaled Mikkawi: MTN Rwandau2019s CEO

MTN Rwanda has said that it will slash its total annual investment by 55 percent to $45m (Rwf25.6 billion) this year.

"There’s no need to invest heavily in building capacity and coverage every year, what we did in 2009 can serve in 2010 and what is required now is to maintain what we built last year,” the company’s CEO, Khaled Mikkawi, told Business Times in an interview.

MTN Rwanda’s investment into its operations and network upgrading has seen a sharp rise in the recent past, reaching $100 million (Rwf56.9 billion) in 2009.

Mikkawi said that 2009 was dedicated to expansion in the much needed coverage and capacity.

The CEO explained that this year the company will focus on attracting more subscribers by introducing new promotions so as to make a full utilisation of the company’s network capacity.

"When you have such quality, size of network that can serve 3 million subscribers, then we need to look for the 3 million subscribers to utilize the capacity,” he said.

"Currently we have close to 2 million subscribers and this year we are targeting an extra million subscribers hopefully to make up the 3 million our capacity can handle”.

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