Vodafone Idea (Vi) has sought release of bank guarantees worth around Rs 15,000 crore, held up with the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) against the telco’s adjusted gross revenue dues (AGR).
The telco has told DoT that its potential investors were seeking these finer details as the loss-making telco races to tie up external funding by its self-mandated March end deadline.
Of its dues, Vi has already paid over Rs 7,854 crore. Vi has said that at any time, the DoT has some Rs 23,000-25,000 crore worth of BGs furnished by the telco. The DoT though has already started to return some BGs.
“Vodafone has expressed the need to release bank guarantees since the AGR dues themselves have been deferred by four years. The company also wishes that the date of the apex court order in favour of the government be frozen as the date till which to compute the AGR dues,” a senior government official said.
In its affidavits to the government, the DoT has pegged Vi’s AGR dues at around Rs 58,254 crore. This included licence fees and spectrum usage charge (SUC) demands calculated up to FY 2016-17. On these outstanding amounts, interest, penalty and interest on penalty was calculated up to October, 2019.
