The government has no plan to close down loss-making public sector telecom firms BSNL and MTNL, Minister of State for Telecom Sanjay Dhotre told Lok Sabha on Wednesday.

The minister shared that BSNL's loss has swelled to Rs 15,500 crore from Rs 14,904 crore, and that of MTNL increased to Rs 3,811 crore from Rs 3,398 crore between 2019-20 and 2018-19. "The government has no plan to close down BSNL and MTNL," Dhotre said in a written reply.

 The government had announced a revival package of around Rs 69,000 crore in October 2019. The revival plan includes reduction in employee costs through a voluntary retirement scheme (VRS) for the employees of age 50 years and above, administrative allotment of spectrum for 4G services with funding through budgetary allocation and debt restructuring by raising of sovereign guarantee bonds.

In addition, it includes monetization of assets to generate resources for retiring debt, capital expenditure and other requirements, and in-principle approval for the merger of BSNL and MTNL.

 In his reply to a separate question, Dhotre said 78,569 employees of BSNL and 14,387 of MTNL opted for VRS which led to about 50 percent reduction of salary expenditure in BSNL and by about 75 percent in MTNL.  "The government has allotted Rs 16,206 crore to meet the total fund requirement for ex-gratia on VRS. An amount of Rs 14,890 crore has been released to BSNL and MTNL.

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