Govt takes Rs 12,489 crore hit as telcos understate revenue: CAG

The CAG presented its report on sharing of revenue by private telecom service providers in Parliament on Friday

Government has suffered a loss Rs 12,488.93 crore as six private telecom operators including RCom and Bharti Airtel understated gross revenue by Rs 46,045.75 crore from 2006-07 to 2009-10, Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) said on Friday.

The CAG presented its report on sharing of revenue by private telecom service providers (PSPs) in Parliament on Friday.

"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 report contains significant findings on correctness and completeness of revenue share paid to the government by Bharti Airtel, Vodafone India, Reliance Communications, Idea Cellular, Tata Teleservices and Aircel along with their subsidiaries for the period from 2006-07 to 2009-10.

The financial impact due to understatement of GR stood at at Rs 1,507.25 crore for Reliance Communications, 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.