Telcos reported lower revenue: Comptroller and Auditor General of India
New Delhi: The Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) said on Tuesday that five telecom firms including Tata Teleservices, Telenor and Videocon among others have understated revenues by over Rs 14,800 crore, resulting in a short fall of nearly Rs 2,578 crore to the exchequer. The CAG said that the Centre was paid Rs 1,015.17 crore less in licence fee, Rs 511.53 crore in spectrum usage charge, and Rs 1,052.13 crore as interest applicable on delay in payment. The operators audited are Tata Teleservices, Telenor, Videocon Telecom, Qaudrant (a Videocon group firm) and Jio.
“To sum up the verification of records of five PSPs (private sector players) by audit indicated total understatement of AGR of Rs 14,813.97 crore for the period up to 2014-15 and consequent short payment of revenue share on Government of India to the tune of Rs 1,526 crore. The interest due on the short paid revenue share, for the period up to March 2016 was Rs 1,052.13 crore,” said CAG in a report tabled in Parliament.
The New Telecom Policy (NTP-99) introduced the revenue sharing model in the telecom sector. Under this system, telecom licencees were required to share a percentage of their adjusted gross revenue with the government as annual license fee (LF). In addition, operators were also required to pay spectrum usage charges for the use of spectrum allotted to them. The CAG said the Centre’s collection from Tata Teleservices is short of Rs 1,893.6 crore, Telenor - Rs 603.75 crore, Videocon - Rs 48.08 crore, Quadrant - Rs 26.62 crore and Jio - Rs 6.78 crore for LF, SUC and applicable charges.
The CAG findings are based on the audit of Tata Teleservices and Tata Teleservices (Maharashtra) Ltd from FY11 to FY15; Quadrant Televentures (FY07 to FY15); Videocon Telecom (FY10 to FY15); Telenor (FY10 to FY15) and Jio Infocomm from FY13 to FY15.
