OREANDA-NEWS. Federal Tariff Service does not plan to increase average tariffs for local landline telephony for 2008, Veles Capital informs with reference to the vice head of FTS Vitaly Evdokimenko. Evdokimenko explained that most regions have their local telephone tariffs already at levels equal to economic costs.

According to Evdokimenko, FTS will examine possible increase of maximum unlimited tariff for operators, to have their tariffs below economically adequate level. Though, some regions may have their unlimited tariffs decreased, he noted. Regions having their tariffs at the level of economic costs named by Evdokimenko are Moscow and North-West federal district. Combined and 'pay per call' tariffs are not planned to be changed by FTS, confirmed the vice head. In his opinion, changes of unlimited tariff will be enough to get operator's prices to the adequate economic level. Evdokimenko reminds that forecast of social-economic development of RF provides for maximum increase of local phone tariffs by 10% over 2008, however, the actual growth over many regions will be much lesser. Though tariffs for services of intercity or international calls of Rostelecom will be downed by 4-5% in 2008.

Apart from this, operators, in order to have their tariffs at fair economic levels, may have their compensatory payment canceled by FTS, which is paid to operators of long-distance communication, under context of cross backing of tariffs for local calls with international and intercity calls. Other operators of local communications will have their compensatory payment cut by 50% starting with January 1st 2008.

According to the analysts, the given news is neutral for most of IRCs. All companies entered profitable level, while EBITDA margin is reaching 40%, which is a good value. On top of that, back in February 2007, IRCs introduced new tariffs, which could have proved additional support to the growth of sales. "On the other hand, this could have caused disputes in the local population, hence, FTS is unlikely to increase tariffs of local communications over the election year. IRCs still have some reserve for an increase of tariffs - all companies set price of their unlimited tariff below setting the value by FTS. However, the statement of Evdokimenko may negatively affect shares of Comstar, as it is highly possible that tariffs of MGTS will not be increased over 2008," the experts reckon.

Compensatory payment, according to the order of the government #637 of October 24, 2005, will be in effect till January 1st 2008. "Hence, in our models of IRCs we consider excluding of the given income. However, if compensatory payment will be saved for some IRCs, this could become a positive support for them. Regarding tariffs of Rostelecom, we can say that our model is using forecast of MEDT, according to which tariffs of international calls will be cut by 3.5%," the expert forcast.