No plans to exit India; actively engaging with govt: Vodafone

October 31, 2019 23:29

British telecom giant Vodafone on Thursday said it will continue to stay invested in the Indian market and is seeking the government's support to tide over the current challenging times.

The clarification assumes significance as Vodafone Idea is staring at nearly Rs 40,000 crore of potential statutory dues after a Supreme Court ruling upheld the government's way of calculating telecom revenue, on which licence fee and spectrum usage charges are computed.

"Vodafone is aware of the unfounded and baseless rumours circulating in some of the Indian media that we have decided to exit the market. We would like to categorically state that this is not true and is malicious," Vodafone group said in a statement.

Vodafone said it is actively engaging with the government and is "fully supportive of our local management as they continue to manage our joint venture in these challenging times".

Old telecom operators which have been hit the hardest by the Supreme Court verdict are seeking relief from the government on these unpaid dues.

Meanwhile, a senior government official said that Tata Sons Chairman Natarajan Chandrasekaran on Thursday met Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad in the backdrop of the apex court ruling on Adjusted Gross Revenue.

Responding to an e-mail query, a Tata Sons spokesperson said, "We do not comment on speculations."

Holding out hope for the crisis-ridden sector, the government earlier this week constituted a committee of secretaries to explore a financial bailout package for the telecom sector by lowering spectrum charges as well as ending the era of free mobile phone calls and dirt cheap data.

The committee, headed by Cabinet Secretary Rajiv Gauba, has been asked to examine "all aspects" of "financial stress" faced by service providers such as Bharti Airtel and Vodafone-Idea and suggest measures to mitigate them, sources in the Department of Telecommunications have said. -- PTI

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