CAG faults BSNL's Rs794-crore 'idle investment'

The Comptroller and Auditor General has faulted public sector telecom enterprise BSNL for what it termed "excess procurement of cables and equipment for landline telephony" Rs794 crore despite a falling subscriber base.

The CAG report, tabled in Parliament said, "Procurement of cables, exchange equipment and other stores for landline telephony service without considering the declining trend in the subscriber base of landline telephony and the past consumption pattern of stores resulted in excess procurement."

Mbile services users in the country has increased substantially over the past few years, outpacing the growth of landline connections and at the end of last year, the total wireless subscriber base in India stood at 233.63 million.

The report further said that BSNL had failed to realise revenue worth Rs35 crore from private telecom firms due to deficiencies in billing and collection charges for infrastructure facilities provided by the company. 

It said that dues worth Rs72 crore had accumulated, blaming "control weakness" in the service provider.

Similarly, MTNL, which provides services in Delhi and Mumbai, was also plagued by problem of procuring wireless-in-local loop equipment without assessing the requirement, resulting in an expenditure worth Rs219 crore, the CAG report said.

BSNL has maintained that network infrastructure inadequacy has led to it losing customers yto new private operators with better capacities.