Indian telecom operators are already going through a tough phase, thanks to the competitive market. Today, Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) tabled in Parliament said that five telecom operators in the country had understated their revenues. And the telecom operators are Tata Teleservices, Telenor, Videocon Telecom, Quadrant (a Videocon group firm) and Reliance Jio.
These five telecom operators have understated the revenues by over Rs 14,800 crores, which led to a shortfall of close to Rs 2,578 crore to the banks.
It is also stated that these telecom operators paid Rs 1,015.17 crore less in license fee, Rs 511.53 crore less in spectrum usage, and Rs 1,052.13 crore as interest applicable for delaying the payment to the government.
"As per the report of Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) tabled in Parliament, the government 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," a report from PTI stated.
It is also revealed that the government collection from Telenor is short of Rs 603.75 crores, Tata Teleservices is short of Rs 1,893.6 crores, Reliance Jio is short of Rs 6.78 crores, Videocon is short of Rs 48.08 crores, and Quadrant is short of Rs 26.62 crores. These charges are for license fees, and on top of these, other charges such as SUC and interest rates for late payment are also applicable.
"To sum up the verification of records of five PSPs (private sector players) by audit indicated total understatement of AGR (adjusted gross revenue) 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 1,526.7 crore," said CGI.
CGI also added that the "interest due on the short paid revenue share for the period up to March 2016 was Rs 1,052.13 crore."
To summarise the things, the CAG report is based on the audit of Reliance Jio Infocomm from 2012-13 to 2014-15, Tata Teleservices and Tata Teleservices (Maharashtra) Ltd from 2010-11 to 2014-15, Videocon Telecom (2009-10 to 2014-15), Telenor (2009-10 to 2014-15), and Quadrant Televentures (2006-07 to 2014- 15).
