Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited (MTNL) are amongst the worst performing government-owned entities in the financial year 2017. Alongside both the telcos, airline Air India also said be a loss-making entity for the government. All the three PSUs combinedly incurred 55.66% of the total losses suffered by the top ten loss-making CPSEs in 2016-17. As per a government survey tabled in Parliament today, Indian Oil, Coal India and ONGC have emerged as the most profitable PSUs during the same period.
"The Public Enterprises Survey 2016-17, which mapped the performance of central public sector units, showed that the top ten loss-making state-owned firms accounted for a whopping 83.82% of the total losses made by 82 loss-making CPSEs during the year," a PTI report said.
The top three performers on the list are Indian Oil Corporation Ltd, Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) and Coal India Ltd added 19.69%, 18.45% and 14.94% respectively to the total profit earned by the top ten profit making CPSEs during FY2017.
"BSNL, Air India and MTNL incurred 55.66% of the total losses suffered by the top ten loss-making CPSEs in 2016-17," added the report.
For years now, BSNL and MTNL have been struggling in the Indian telecom space. The former, during FY2017, crossed 100 million subscriber base and is going strong at the moment, while the latter is struggling to make a mark in the industry. And there are several rumours about the potential merger of BSNL and MTNL, but the government remains unmoved.
Furthermore, the report also added that Hindustan Petroleum Corporation, Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Ltd managed to enter the top ten profit making CPSEs list, while the Hindustan Fertiliser Corporation and Power Finance Corporation have moved out of this league, which is unusual.
Also, the top ten profit-making companies accounted for 63.57% of the total profit made by 174 profit making CPSEs during the year. Lastly, the overall net profit from all the 257 operating PSUs during 2016-17 stood at Rs 1,27,602 crore compared to Rs 1,14,239 crore, witnessing a growth of 11.7%.
