State-run BSNL has cleared a portion of its dues to vendors last week. The company had paid 10% of the outstanding amount to all the companies such as Nokia, ZTE, UT Starcom, etc. According to sources, the state-run telecom firm raised a loan of Rs 1,000 crore from banks, out of which Rs 600 crore were utilised for making payment to vendors and the remaining Rs 400 crore were used for internal purposes.
The sources further said around Rs 100 crore each were paid to Nokia and ZTE, the major network providers of the company. Apart from that, money was paid to UT Starcom, Ericsson, etc.
BSNL/MTNL have outstanding dues in the range of Rs 15,000-20,000 towards vendors, which have been pending for a long time.
Most of the companies have written several letters to the firms as well as department of telecommunications (DoT) seeking release of their payments.
A few months ago, industry body COAI had also written to DoT on behalf of the vendors urging that payments be released.
More recently, Nokia had warned that it would pull out support for maintaining BSNL’s network in the absence of clearance of the dues. But as some amount has been released, the company continues to provide the support.
Despite the revival package to the tune of around Rs 70,000 crore announced in October last year, BSNL continues to face liquidity challenges.
The company is not even paying salaries to its staff on time. In the absence of 4G, the revenue of the company is not growing. Other measures like monetisation of land assets are also stuck due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.
