SANJAY THAPA JEET
NEW DELHI
With the financial mess that the telcos are with the recent SC decision on AGR -Indian telcos have approached the Union Finance Ministry in its pre-budget meet and demanded creation of an infrastructure bank that will help telcos to to raise bonds in order to capitalise funds for the cash starved industry.
The SC decision on AGR in October 24, has led to an additional burden of Rs 1.47 crore on the high debt ridden industry, Faced with this mounting payments, telcos have demanded for lowering of the licence fees as well as SUC which has been demanded by the industry for long. COAI Director General Rajan Mathews has called for reduction in the SUC charges from the present 5 per cent to 1 per cent and licence fee from the present rate of 8 percent to 3 percent of the AGR. Amongst other demands there is a call for termination of universal service obligation fund charges, lowering of import duties on telecom equipments as well as clearing of input credit tax worth Rs 36000 crore. As well as classification of tower business under the infrastructure category.
AGR of Indian telcos has seen a sharp fall in the first quarter of 2019, recording 4.56 per cent fall led particularly by loss of calls by J&K development whereby calls were suspended. AGR touched Rs 37,388 crore this further dropped to Rs 27,825 crore in the second quarter which was led by a sharp fall in ARPU. However, the December a hike by 35-40 per cent in pre-paid tariffs by telcos is expected to raise the ARPU in the coming months.Telcos said that they pay the highest tax in the world — out of every Rs 100 earned it pays Rs 30 to the government. Given the fierce competition the ARPU has dropped from Rs 169 in the first qurter of 2017 to Rs 129 in the first quarter of 2019. Sunil Mittal, Chairman Bharti AIrtel has suggested in the pre-budget meet that the TRAI ensure that the ARPU in India should at least touch Rs 300 -for the industry to survive. This would still be the lowest in the world the added.
