Venezuela pay-TV stymied by cash shortage

[khurramdar]

Venezuela pay-TV stymied by cash shortage     
Written by Chris Forrester  
Tuesday, 19 January 2010 09:23
The Venezuelan government is limiting the import of set-top boxes.

The government’s Central Bank will not free up enough foreign exchange to importers wishing to buy set-top boxes. This cash shortage has stymied the growth of pay-TV in Venezuela. Last year saw only 150,000 new subs signed up, compared with 300,000 in 2008. There are a total of some 2m pay-TV subscribers in the country.

Even with high demand companies did not have enough STBs due to a lack of dollars at the official exchange rate for importing the equipment. According to Eduardo Stigol, President of largest Venezuelan MSO Inter, his company would have needed “around US$40 million for imports and only had 10% [of that amount].” Other operators suffering the same problem were NetUno, DirecTV and Movistar. The scenario has turned even more complex after the last currency devaluation, which took place a week ago.

In a statement, Stigol claimed that companies cannot do a good job without the necessary amount of dollars. In 2009, he said ”we could have totalled around 50,000 customers with home HD STBs, as we had demand for that equipment all over the year, but unfortunately our supply was not sufficient and we could only reach a bit less than 3,000” making their HD customer database grow to 10,000 vs. the 630,000 pay-TV customers reached by 2009 year-end. “It would have been a great year,” he concluded.

© Rapid TV News 2010