NEW DELHI: State-owned telecom majors BSNL and MTNL have turned positive in terms of earnings before taxes for the first time in several years, noted the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) on Monday in its review for the year 2020.
According to the DoT, for the first half of financial year 2020-21, the two telecom firms recorded positive earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortisation (EBITDA). EBIDTA is a key measure of a company’s income from its operations, before items such as tax and interest take out a chunk.
The process to allocate 4G spectrum on a pan-India basis for the two companies has also been initiated, including for the lucrative markets of Delhi and Mumbai, the DoT noted, adding that funds for the same had been provisioned.
As for the problematic revenues-to-wages ratio that the two companies had been struggling under, the DoT said that overall 92,956 employees had opted for the Voluntary Retirement Schemes (VRS) floated earlier last year.
“The salary expenditure in BSNL and MTNL (Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd) has reduced by around 50 per cent (about Rs 600 crore per month) and 75 per cent (about Rs 140 crore per month), respectively,” the review said. A sovereign guarantee of Rs 15,000 crore had also been extended to the telcos and both have raised funds from the market in order to restructure high-cost debt.
The government had drawn up a comprehensive revival plan for the two ailing telecom corporations, which had included the measures mentioned earlier and others such as monetisation of land and fiber assets, debt restructuring through sovereign guarantee bonds, and an in-principle approval for the merger of the two telecom companies.
As for department-led initiatives to manage the pandemic, DoT said that a new Quarantine Alert System was developed for the monitoring and management of quarantines which has been used by 18 state and union territory authorities so far. “It has handled approximately 27 lakh targets,” the Dot said.