NEW DELHI: The government on Wednesday said that it has no plans to disinvest stake in the state-run BSNL and MTNL, which are on their revival mode. Ravi Shankar Prasad, telecom minister said, every attempt with effective monitoring is being undertaken to revive the two companies and make them competitive.
“The results are positive. There is no proposal to disinvest them as part of revival plan,” Prasad said. The minister further said the government has provided financial support of Rs 169.16 crore to BSNL and Rs 458.04 crore to MTNL for surrender of spectrum in 800 MHz band.
Prasad said Rs 7,795.99 crore have been allocated and authorised by BSNL in 2015-16 for expansion of communication network capacity in various telecom services.
In a bid to revive the flagging fortunes of BSNL, the government has given ‘in principle’ approval for hiving off mobile tower assets into a separate company that will help the state-run firm to improve its financial position by unlocking mobile towers value.
In the last two years, 25,000 more mobile towers have been set up and now BSNL has over a lakh towers in the country. It reported an operating profit of Rs 672 crore for FY-2015 on the back of fall in administrative costs and jump in revenues. Its debt equity ratio is around 0.13%, which is lowest in the industry.