Post Budget 2019 Reaction by Mr. Pranav Roach, President, Hughes Network Systems India

It is encouraging to see Budget 2019 taking cognizance of the growing opportunities in the space domain and also talking about increasing India’s global footprint in this sector. This is important because the Indian satellite communications sector is perhaps the only industry still stuck in the 2G era and suffers chronic capacity shortage resulting in users continuing to pay much higher than global rates. There is a surge of investment and innovation in the space sector globally driven by private sector but in India the private sector is locked out and a huge investment and employment opportunity is being lost.