Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman held a meeting with various industrialists to take suggestions from them ahead of the Union Budget 2020, on February 1.

Post the meeting, Sunil Bharti Mittal Founder and Chariman of Bharti Enterprises said, “I have come here to discuss only one thing, make doing business easy in the country and that is what my thrust was. I have made some suggestions around merger and acquisitions (M&A), around de-mergers, about NCLT processes, about certain sections of income tax, which are coming in the way of M&A or are slowing them down. The idea is to create more freedom for the industry for them to perform. I think the Finance Minister received them very well with associates and secretaries.

"What we look forward to in this budget is that they unleash the energy of the Indian entrepreneurs to do more, ” he said.

He said, tariffs were mentioned, "Tariffs are by far too low, the investments in networks are very high, new technology have to be put in, 5G has to be ushered into this country and we have to take the dividend of the Digital India that cannot happen without telecom. Indian consumers have been enjoying very lower rates, they will continue to enjoy lower rates, but I think we need to have a balance between requirement of an investments and the consumers on the other side."

"My view is Rs 200 ARPU, eventually going to Rs 300 ARPU at the lower end Rs 100 for a customer over a month of consuming rich data, voice and other services and on the upper hand Rs 450-500 therefore blended eventual landing point of Rs 300 per month, which will still be as USD 4 a month by far the lowest anywhere in the world and yet consuming 2-3 times more data than anywhere else in the world that is the balance we need to get to,"he said, adding that TRAI needs to work on this because the industry has not been able to have an orderly mechanism to get to that point.

"We are unnecessarily killing this industry in a manner, in way which is not conducive for our industry and that is why we need TRAI’s intervention,” he added.