Aleem Khan

Dig­i­cel sales in T&T grew by 13 per cent to US$64 mil­lion in the three months to the end of Sep­tem­ber, the ap­par­ent high­est in all of the com­pa­ny's mar­kets world­wide, ac­cord­ing to a re­port in the Irish Times news­pa­per yes­ter­day.Shown the re­port and asked for com­ments yes­ter­day, the group's spokesper­son in Ja­maica, An­to­nia Gra­ham told the T&T Guardian: "Thank you, but we won't be com­ment­ing."

Ac­cord­ing to fi­nan­cial state­ments sent to the com­pa­ny's bond­hold­ers, to­tal group rev­enues at Dig­i­cel, the mo­bile phone com­pa­ny owned by Irish busi­ness­man De­nis O'Brien, fell by US$7 mil­lion to US$691 mil­lion in the three months to the end of Sep­tem­ber."De­spite un­der­ly­ing growth of two per cent, the com­pa­ny blamed a fall against the dol­lar in the cur­ren­cies of Haiti, Papua New Guinea and Ja­maica for the dip in sales," the Irish Times re­port­ed.

Dig­i­cel's "per­for­mance dipped sharply in Haiti, the im­pov­er­ished coun­try that is one of the com­pa­ny's main mar­kets. Its sub­scriber num­bers there fell by six per cent, while sales fell by 11 per cent to US$126 mil­lion, with a nine per cent re­duc­tion when the ef­fects of cur­ren­cy are stripped out".Dig­i­cel blamed "weak­er eco­nom­ic con­di­tions" in Haiti and new price plans, which it said were de­signed to "grow our mar­ket share." Dig­i­cel al­ready has a 75 per cent mar­ket share in Haiti, which was dev­as­tat­ed by an earth­quake in 2010.

In Ja­maica, an­oth­er of Dig­i­cel's main mar­kets, rev­enues fell by nine per cent to US$107 mil­lion. The com­pa­ny said its un­der­ly­ing rev­enues had grown by one per cent, while the Ja­maican dol­lar had fall­en by 12 per cent.Dig­i­cel's op­er­a­tions in El Sal­vador were al­so hit by a weak econ­o­my, with rev­enues there falling by US$3 mil­lion to US$28 mil­lion, al­though sub­scriber num­bers in­creased by sev­en per cent.Dig­i­cel said it plans to launch 4G ser­vices in El Sal­vador in the cur­rent quar­ter.

The re­port said Dig­i­cel's "rev­enues in Papua New Guinea, an­oth­er of its ma­jor mar­kets, were flat at US$116 mil­lion, while sales in T&T grew by 13 per cent to US$64 mil­lion. Sales in oth­er mar­kets, in­clud­ing the British Vir­gin Is­lands, Guyana and Suri­name, in­creased by four per cent to US$170 mil­lion."While over­all rev­enues fell slight­ly, it was an im­proved per­for­mance on the pre­vi­ous three months to the end of June, when Dig­i­cel made a net loss of about US$11 mil­lion.

The com­pa­ny paid in­ter­est charges of US$104 mil­lion on loan notes and project fi­nance debts of US$5.675 bil­lion, ac­cord­ing to the ac­counts.