CAG finds telcos understating

revenues, government orders audit

YUTHIKA BHARGAVA
NEW DELHI: With the CAG report
tabled in Parliament on Friday
indicating a loss of Rs. 12,489
crore to the exchequer due to
understatement of revenues by
six telecom operators, including Airtel, Idea and Vodafone,
the government has ordered a
special audit of telecom companies for three years.
Verification of records of
six PSPs indicated total understatement of Rs. 46,045.75 crore
in gross revenue, 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, the Comptroller
and Auditor General of India
(CAG) said. This is for the four-

year period from 2006-07 to

2009-10.
Commenting on the findings, Telecom Minister Ravi
Shankar Prasad said special audit of the operators books
would be done for three years
from 2009, to check for underreporting of revenues.

I have taken a grim view on

this because this is again a legacy issue of the previous government Even though in terms of
well-established parliamentary procedure, the report will
go to the Public Accounts
Committee, I have directed
Secretary Telecom and Mem-

ber Finance to put in place a robust system in order that such

gaps do not reoccur, Mr. Prasad said.
In conclusion, the audit
found that even after 16 years of
the introduction of the revenue
share regime, the correctness
and completeness of revenue
flowing into the consolidated
Fund of India could not be assured by DoT, the CAG said.
The CAG report said the financial impact on LF and SUC
due to understatement of gross
revenue stood at Rs. 1,507.25
crore for Reliance Communications, Rs. 1,357.68 crore for
Tata Teleservices, Rs. 1,066.95
crore for Airtel, Rs. 749.85 crore
for Vodafone, Rs. 423.26 crore
for Idea and Rs. 107.61 crore for
Aircel.

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