The government has proposed to increase the outlay for the telecom ministry to ₹73,990 crore, mainly due to a significant rise in capital infusion for state-run telecom firm BSNL.
The increased allocation is for various projects, including BharatNet, capital requirement of BSNL, including cost of spectrum, network rollout, and to meet internal requirements, Telecom minister Jyotiraditya Scindia told PTI.
“We have seen a very healthy increase in allocation from RE (revised estimate) of last year, ₹53,000 crore on telecom. We have grown to ₹73,000 crore. That’s almost 40 per cent,” the minister said.
When asked about the reason for increased allocation for the telecom ministry, especially BSNL, Scindia said the government is trying to grow BSNL from strength to strength.
“I mentioned to you that our ARPU (average revenue per user) grew by almost 9 per cent from ₹90 to almost ₹99. We would like to touch three digits soon. We have grown revenue across the board across all our three verticals, and now we need this injection of CAPEX along with our internal cash flows so that we can take BSNL on its path of resurgence,” the minister said.
He said that the proposed incremental Budget includes funds for the rural broadband project BharatNet.
“So there are multiple issues that we’re looking at from Bharatnet where the allocation is ₹1,39,000 crore to spectrum for BSNL to its own internal requirements of CAPEX, whether it be towers or be it media or battery, we are trying to fire on all cylinders,” Scindia said.
He said that there has been a jump in allocation for the Development of the North East Region as well, from a revised estimate (RE) of ₹4,495 crore to ₹6,800 crore, which is almost a 50 per cent jump.
“The North East has seen a tremendous amount of importance given in this budget from urbanization with 4,000 e-buses to five Buddhist circuits across six states in the Northeast, and a tremendous amount of preponderance and importance given to the areas of health and education,” the minister said.