According to Moody’s, Bharti Airtel’s credit profile wouldn’t be impacted following the payment of statutory dues that the telco owes to the government.
In fact, as per Moody’s, Airtel has the financial capacity to withstand $5 billion worth of statutory fee. The firm added that the recent capital-raising activities of Airtel provide additional liquidity to fund the AGR payment.
Earlier in October 2019, the Supreme Court had directed the telecom operators including Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Idea and Tata Teleservices to pay outstanding adjusted gross revenues (AGR) as per definition by the Department of Telecommunications (DoT).
As per DoT’s definition of AGR, Airtel owed the government around Rs 350 billion in statutory dues.
Airtel had recently paid Rs 100 billion to the DoT towards the AGR dues and had told the government that it will pay the balance amount before the next date of hearing of the Supreme Court i.e. March 17, 2020 as it needs time to complete the exercise of calculating dues across 22 circles.
