Bangladesh Telecommunications Company Limited (BTCL) has defaulted Tk 2,259 crore to the exchequer as its main instrument landline telephone has fallen out of favour with the advent of mobile phone. And as per licensing terms, the state-run company has to share a portion of the revenue earned from the services with the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC), which then deposits the sum to the state coffer. Since October 2008, the BTCL has been skipping its payments to the BTRC. The BTCL owes Tk 628.40 crore to the BTRC as the regulator’s share of the revenue from the interconnection exchange service from October 2008 to June 2014.
The BTCL also has the licence to act as an international gateway (IGW) operator and it missed payments for this service, too. It failed to pay Tk 944.56 crore from the revenue earned from handling incoming and outgoing international phone calls from October 2008 to June 2014. The payments were regular from July 2014 to April 2016 and then stopped the following month. The BTRC has sent many letters to the BTCL to pay its dues. Although the BTCL is a large organisation with a purchase committee in place, it has not adopted a purchase plan. Bangladesh Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) found that the guidelines issued by the National Board of Revenue for the collection of value-added and income taxes were not being followed by the different departments of BTCL. What is more damning is that the CAG found no trace of any internal audit system; the independent audit agency could not find any report from the previous year.
Once a hugely profitable enterprise, the BTCL has been racking up losses since fiscal 2009-10 save for fiscal 2012-13, when it turned in a profit of Tk 5 crore. It last logged in proper profit back in fiscal 2009-10: Tk 106.1 crore. Its ongoing projects are worth about Tk 7,500 crore, with the biggest chunk — Tk 3,314.9 crore — allocated to the project for the modernisation of the telecommunication network. We do ask the authorities concerned to check the viability of BTCL during the digital revolution. Wasting up people’s money or nurturing a losing concern is not necessary at all.
