Telecom companies\' owe Rs 22,600 crore as licence fees, rest is interest-cum-penalty
The balance 74 per cent of the total licence fee dues of Rs 92,641 crore are on account of interest on this amount, penalty and interest on penalty.
New Delhi: Telecom companies' unpaid licence fees amount to Rs 22,589 crore, while interest and penalties took their total liability to Rs 92,641 crore, sources said.
Licence fee is the major component of the total Rs 1.47 lakh crore adjusted gross revenue (AGR) dues owed by both operational and non-operational telecom companies to the government till July 2019.
Besides licence fees, telecom companies owe Rs 55,054 crore in spectrum usage charges (SUC), as per estimates of the Department of Telecom-munications. (DoT).
As telecom operators scramble to comply with Supreme Court order on AGR dues, the sources said actual pending liability on licence fees is Rs 22,589 crore. The balance 74 per cent of the total licence fee dues of Rs 92,641 crore are on account of interest on this amount, penalty and interest on penalty.
Out of the total unpaid basic licence fee, telecos that are operational owe around Rs 16,746 crore, according to the DoT’s estimates in July 2019. The unpaid licence fees of Airtel was assessed at Rs 5,528.52 crore, Vodafone Idea Rs 6,870.69 crore, Tata Group Rs 2,321.31 crore, Telenor (now merged with Airtel) Rs 529.02 crore, BSNL Rs 614 crore and MTNL Rs 876.39 crore.
"These estimates were prepared in July. Fresh calculation is in process," an official source said. —PTI