The State-owned undertakings Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd. (BSNL) and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd. (MTNL) have turned EBITDA positive in first 6 months of this financial year.
Data given by Ministry of Communications showed that, BSNL EBITDA rose from minus Rs3596cr for half year ended in September, 2019 to positive Rs602cr, for MTNL the corresponding figures were minus Rs549cr in September, 2019, and the current figure, positive Rs276cr. According to Department of Telecommunications (DoT) sources,both organizations are expected to reduce their losses by 50% when compared to 2019-20.
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The ministry said that the reasons for better performance include a sharp reduction in wage bill due to Voluntary Retirement Scheme (VRS) (nearly 50% workforce of BSNL and 75% of MTNL was reduced). Equally important, BSNL was able to maintain their revenue and cut down on other costs.
"BSNL is also rapidly expanding its Fiber-To-The Home (FTTH) connections and the progress is being closely monitored by DoT. In the mobile segment, market share has increased to 10.36% in October, 2020 as per figures published by TRAI. BSNL added over 10 million new customers during this financial year in mobile segment. This has also given fillip to Government’s Digital India drive of cashless transactions as online transactions has increased by over 43% in December, 2020 since last financial year," the ministry added.
