Telcos part-pay Rs 10,808 crore

Successful spectrum bidders, including Bharti Airtel, Reliance Jio and Idea, have made Rs 10,808 crore towards upfront payments on Tuesday.

Although telecom companies have time till April 8 to make total upfront payment of Rs 28,872 crore for radio waves won by them, some firms have made part payments to the government.

Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad earlier requested the telecom firms to try to give upfront money before March 31 so that the government can meet the fiscal deficit target in the fiscal ended Tuesday.

Bharti Airtel made part payment of Rs 4,725 crore followed by Reliance Jio (Rs 2,518 crore), Idea Cellular (Rs 1,935 crore), Vodafone (Rs 1,030 crore) and Tata Teleservices (Rs 600 crore). The payment, they said, will help the government in keeping the fiscal deficit within the target of 4.1 per cent of the GDP, or about Rs 5.12 lakh crore, for 2014-15.

As per DoT, the upfront payment due from Idea is Rs 7,790.1 crore; Airtel Rs 7,832.58 crore; Vodafone Rs 6,867.93 crore; Reliance Jio Rs 2,519.38 crore; Tata Teleservices Rs 2,013.33 crore; RCom Rs 1,106.95 crore and Aircel Rs 742.5 crore. The 19-day spectrum auction that ended on March 25 evoked good response from the industry and bids worth Rs 1,09,874.91 crore were received from seven companies.

Direct tax kitty to miss revised target

The government’s direct tax mop-up is set to miss the revised target for the 2014-15 fiscal as the collection so far has been only about Rs 6,30,000 crore, an I-T department official said.

Keeping in view of the sluggish rise in collection, the government had revised downwards its target at Rs 7,05,000 crore for the current fiscal, after initially having budgeted Rs 7,36,000 crore in the direct tax mop-up. The department may not be able to achieve even the revised target, the official said, adding that as on March 24 the department had collected only Rs 6,30,000 crore from across the country, up Rs 5,83,000 crore during the corresponding period last fiscal.