The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) on Friday said six major private telecom companies understated gross revenue by Rs 46,045.75 crore for a period between 2006-07 and 2009-10, and denied the government its share of income which has been estimated at Rs 12,488.93 crore.
The CAG presented its report on sharing of revenue by private telecom service providers (PSPs) in Parliament. The country’s auditor calculated the losses to the government on inspections of the books of accounts of private telecom firms and on actual earnings.
The report contains significant findings on correctness and completeness of revenue share paid to the government by Bharti Airtel, Vodafone India, RComm, Idea Cellular, Tata Teleservices and Aircel along with their subsidiaries for the period from 2006-07 to 2009-10. “Verification of records of six PSPs indicated total understatement of Rs 46,045.75 crore in gross revenue (GR), having corresponding impact of Rs 3,752.37 crore on licence fee (LF) and Rs 1,460.23 crore on spectrum usage charge (SUC). The interest on this short/non-payment of LF and SUC works out to Rs 7,276.33 crore,” CAG said.
The financial impact due to understatement of GR stood at at Rs 1,507.25 crore for RComm, Rs 1,357.68 crore for Tata Teleservices, Airtel (Rs 1,066.95 crore), Vodafone (Rs 749.85 crore), Idea (Rs 423.26 crore) and Aircel (Rs 107.61 crore), the CAG said.
As per the rules, telecom companies have to pay licence fee as well as spectrum usage charges based on their revenue to the government.