The Hindu : Front Page : Rs. 4,000 crore remains unpaid to BSNL

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Sunday, Mar 23, 2008
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Rs. 4,000 crore remains unpaid to BSNL

Sandeep Joshi

NEW DELHI: The Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) has to recover over Rs. 4,000 crore from its subscribers and private operators and this is having an adverse impact on its financial health, according to a report of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG).

The report, tabled in Parliament recently, says that BSNL had yet to recover a staggering Rs.4030.51-crore (by June 2007) – Rs. 3,665.51 crore from the telephone subscribers and Rs. 365 crore from the private players for its leased circuits.

The due from the private telecom players is Rs.100 crore.

Ironically, the arrears are more than half of BSNL’s profit after tax of Rs.7,805.87 crore for 2006-07.

Government share less

The report points out that the private subscribers form the chunk of the dues (over 95 per cent) and the government’s share is only over 4 per cent.

While the arrears from the private subscribers rose in the past five years – from Rs. 2,477 crore in 2002-03 to Rs. 3,495 crore in 2006-07, in the case of the government, it came down from Rs. 207 crore to Rs. 170 crore.

Stating that BSNL should make “concerted efforts” to recover the dues from the private subscribers, the report says that arrears on renting of telephone and telegraph circuits went up from Rs. 289.14 crore in 2002-03 to Rs. 457.14 crore in 2006-07.

The report highlights how “injudicious procurement” of cable, exchange equipments and other stores for the landline service resulted in the organisation losing a whopping Rs.794.32 crore.

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