Much has it seems perplexing, Airtel Uganda has come out to say that they have only made a profit now in 8 years of operation after acquiring what was then known as Zain. This revelation comes from Airtel Uganda’s Managing Director, VG Somasekhar in an interview he had with NTV Uganda recently.
What has brought about this profit
The accumulated losses from Zain and Celtel have been offset by consistent performance by Airtel Uganda, that has enabled the telco to wipe out the accumulated losses. As a result, recorded a profit and will for the first time in 8 years pay corporation tax.
He however denied to report the profit figure awaiting audited results. This comes against the backdrop of Airtel declaring profits in 2016 and once again 2017 for and was credited as being the only profitable amongst Airtel operations in East Africa.
On the same note, Airtel East African operations made a profit if $102M in 2018 against a $90M loss made in 2017. Airtel Uganda is said to have made over $800 million in Foreign Direct Investment in Uganda mainly in upgrading its network infrastructure among others. Last year the telecom declared its Internet Everywhere initiative where it upgraded all its base stations to 3G, blanketing the whole country with 3G signal on top of its 4G sites.
At group level, Airtel Africa also registered positive results last year catapulted by growth in mobile money transactions and data services. We believe these could be the same reasons attributed to Airtel Uganda’s growth against declining voice revenues.
