New Delhi: Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) is set to hold a crucial meeting on April 4 where the focus will be on the 2018-19 financial results and the roadmap forward. According to sources, the board meeting will discuss investments for the next fiscal, along with considering an increase in the ceiling limit for capex loans. "The board meeting is scheduled for April 4 as of now, the approval of the board for raising the ceiling limit for availing the capex loans will be taken and then sent to the Telecom Ministry. The meeting will also draw up investment plans for the next fiscal and targets as well," the source said. As of now, BSNL has a ceiling of Rs 4,300 crore to raise as capex loans.
March salaries to be disbursed on time
They also added that the public sector company is going to ensure that March salaries are paid on time and will be paid out of the PSU's service billings of own resources. This means that BSNL will dig into the revenues raised from its access, leased line, broadband services and enterprise business and not the payments received from the Department of Telecom (DoT) for doing projects like BharatNet, Andaman and Nicobar telecom projects and Network for Spectrum project.
Details of the agenda for the meeting
There are two DoT representatives on the BSNL board. The idea behind holding the meeting is to apprise them of the BSNL action and investment plan for the next fiscal to survive the hyper-competition in the sector, challenges, likely expenditure, market conditions and capex, network expansion included.
Three proposals aimed at reviving BSNL are currently pending with the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI). The PSU has a Rs 6,535-crore voluntary retirement scheme proposal to bring down the employee strength of the organisation from 1.76 lakh crore. The funding of this would be done through 10-year bonds by the government. The other proposal to revive BSNL involves monetisation its land assets which will be considered by the Department of Investment and Public Asset Management (DIPAM).
Apart from this, the 4G spectrum allocation demand is pending with TRAI after DoT referred the matter to it. Meanwhile, DoT has ensured a comfort letter for BSNL to avail Rs 3,500 crore working capital from banks for the maintenance of the networks.
