Underlining the state of broadcasting-Economic Survey, 2021-22

The Economic Survey, tabled in the Parliament, one day before the Union Budget by the Finance Minister is a much-awaited document. Primarily authored by the principal economic adviser and his team, the Survey is a Department of Economic Affairs (DEA) document that underlines the state of the economy and outlines suggestions for policy actions.

Key highlights from the Economic Survey 2022 for broadcasting industry
The Indian services sector is the largest recipient of FDI inflows. The I&B sector’s share in the “Gross FDI equity inflows into Services Sector” in 2021-22 is reported to be 0.54% by the Economic Survey of 2021 – 22 with the inflow of USD 91 million during April-Sep 2021.

Inflow in the previous years was:-
2018-19: USD 1252 million, 2019-20: USD 823 million, 2020-21: USD 314 million.

Cable
Under the flagship BharatNet project, as on 27.09.2021, 5.46 lakh km Optical Fiber Cable has been laid, a total of 1.73 lakh Gram Panchayats (GP) have been connected by Optical Fiber Cable (OFC) and 1.59 lakh Gram Panchayats are service ready on OFC. In addition, 4173 GPs have been connected over satellite media.

Satellite
Across the globe, the trend of space activities is in a state of transition. From being primarily a government driven activity, the sector has been witnessing increasing participation of private sector – not only in the traditional vendor role but also in taking up end-to-end space activities. With this in mind, Government undertook reforms in space sector in 2020, which envisage the private sector to act as a co-traveler in the exploration of outer space and also in providing space-based services.

As a part of these reforms, the first step taken was empowering New Space India Limited (NSIL)-the Public Sector Undertaking (PSU) in this sector –to “own” the operational launch vehicles and space assets of ISRO. Further, the present supply-based model was changed to demand-driven model, wherein NSIL shall act as aggregator of user requirements and obtain commitments. The first

outcome in this regard came recently to the fore with Tata Sky signing an MoU with NSIL for utilizing the capacity on board the upcoming communication satellite GSAT-24, to be built by ISRO and launched by Arianespace. BCS Bureau