Govt seeks over Rs 8000 crore worth first installments towards one time spectrum fee by Jan 15

14 Jan 2013 Evaluate

For the telecom operators who wish to make payments in installments, the government has reportedly asked them to pay their first installment of Rs 8,115.68 crore towards one-time spectrum fee by January 15. Out of this, the installment for Vodafone amounts to around Rs 2,093 crore, Airtel’s at Rs 1,758 crore, BSNL’s at Rs 1,282.98 crore and MTNL’s at Rs 916 crore. The same for Idea Cellular stands at Rs 810 crore (includes Rs 84.45 crore of Spice Communications), Aircel’s at Rs 584 crore (includes Rs 1.98 core of Dishnet), Loop Mobile’s at Rs 607 crore and for Reliance Communications’ it’s about Rs 63 crore. However, the members are evaluating legal options and may approach court over the issue.

The Center is likely to get Rs 4,251.83 crore from retrospective charges, and Rs 18,925.82 from prospective charges for excess radio-waves held by mobile operators. In all, around Rs 23,177 crore is expected to be collected from levy of one-time spectrum fee. Out of this, State-owned BSNL will have to pay around Rs 6,912 crore, followed by Bharti Airtel , which is expected to pay Rs 5,201 crore, Vodafone - Rs 3,599 crore, MTNL - Rs 3,205 crore, Idea Cellular - Rs 2,113 crore (includes Rs 231.5 crore of Spice), Aircel - Rs 1,365 crore (includes Rs 14 crore of Dishnet), Loop Mobile - Rs 606 crore and Reliance Communications - Rs 173 crore.

Telecom operators have been asked to pay the amount in equal annual instalments for the balance number of years of licence in a manner that the last instalment is paid a year before the expiry of company's licences. Further, the government has also given the licensees not wanting to pay the one-time fee, an option to surrender spectrum beyond 4.4 MHz for GSM. For those who wished to pay, an option of making payments in monthly installments at an interest of 9.75 percent was available. 'Licensees will be allowed Equated Annual Installments (EAI) for the balance number of years of license at the rate of 9.75 percent'.

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