New Delhi: Bharti Airtel, Vodafone, Idea and three other private telecom firms understated revenues by more than Rs 61,000 crore over five years, resulting in short payment of nearly Rs 7,700 crore in statutory dues to the government, the CAG said Friday.
The Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) said another Rs 4,531.62 crore was due from the six operators as interest on the short paid revenue share.
Airtel, India’s largest telecom operator, Vodafone India, Idea Cellular, Reliance Communications, Aircel understated revenues during 2010-11 to 2014-15 period (for Sistema Shyam the period begins from 2006-07).
This was done through accounting adjustments for commission or discount paid to their distributors, promotional schemes like free talk time and discounts to post-paid subscribers and on roaming services.
The revenue was understated also by netting of revenue from infrastructure sharing and non-inclusion of forex gains, interest income and sale of investment, the CAG said in a report tabled in Parliament.
CAG calculated that Airtel owes to the government Rs 2,602.24 crore in licence fee and spectrum usage charge (SUC) for 2010-11 to 2014-15. It owes another Rs 1,245.91 crore in interest.
Dues from Vodafone totaled Rs 3,331.79 crore including Rs 1,178.84 crore in interest. For Idea, the statutory dues stood at Rs 1,136.29 crore plus Rs 657.88 crore in interest.
Anil Ambani-led RComm owed a total of Rs 1,911.17 crore (including Rs 839.09 crore interest), Aircel Rs 1,226.65 crore and SSTL Rs 116.71 crore.
RComm evaded revenue share payment through an arrangement with its subsidiary, CAG said.
As per the New Telecom Policy, telecom licensees are required to share a percentage of their Adjusted Gross Revenue (AGR) with the government as annual License Fee (LF). In addition, mobile telephone operators were also required to pay Spectrum Usage Charges (SUC) for the use of radio frequency spectrum allotted to them.
CAG said even though computation of the GR was not in compliance with the licence agreement, the statutory auditors had always certified that the accounts were prepared in accordance with the guidelines/norms.
CAG said private service providers employ distributors, dealers, agents and franchisees to sell their prepaid products for customer acquisition and pay commission/discounts to them. These companies reduced the gross revenue by the amount of commission paid.
Also, promotional offers were not recognised as revenue by the companies while discounts/waivers given to post paid subscribers over and above tariff plans submitted to sector regulator TRAI were deducted from revenue.
As it is, the telecom industry owes Rs 6.10 lakh crore to various financial institutions and banks.
