The telecom regulator took a hardline approach as it demanded payments from two major state-run telecom companies, Teletalk Bangladesh Limited and Bangladesh Telecommunications Company Limited (BTCL), asking them to clear dues amounting to a staggering Tk 3,000 crore.

Teletalk Bangladesh owes the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) Tk 1,848.63 crore, including dues for licensing fees, revenue sharing agreements, spectrum fees, and payments to the social obligation fund.

On the other hand, the BTCL owes the telecom watchdog over Tk 1,100 crore, which includes the regulator's share of revenue and various fees.

It made the call in a meeting with top officials of the two companies at the regulator's office in Dhaka yesterday, presided over by Musfiq Mannan Choudhury, commissioner for finance, accounts and revenue at BTRC.

"It is the government's revenue and they have to pay it," Choudhury told The Daily Star after the meeting, adding that the regulator would initiate an information system audit of Teletalk and BTCL later this month.

"We have asked them to share all of their information, which they always fail to do. They have agreed to provide their revenue information," Choudhury said.

The information system audit will help determine loopholes in the two organisations, he said.

"After the audit, we will convert these loopholes into opportunities and ultimately turn them into profitable ventures."

Md Anwar Hossain, managing director (additional charge) of the BTCL, and AKM Habibur Rahman, managing director of Teletalk, attended yesterday's meeting.

BTRC officials added that they had sent multiple letters to Teletalk and BTCL seeking payments.

However, the financial health of the two companies is in dire straits.

BTCL, whose main offering of landline telephone connections fell out of favour with the advent of mobile phones, began providing a host of telecom services by obtaining licences from the BTRC to stay afloat.

As per licensing terms, the state-run company has to share a portion of the revenue earned from the services availed from BTRC, which then deposits the sum to state coffers.

BTCL was made a public limited company in July 2008, three months before its tendency to skip payments took root.

Since October 2008, the BTCL has been skipping payments to the BTRC, found the Office of the Bangladesh Comptroller and Auditor General, which pored over the state-owned company's books for fiscal 2017-18.

The report was presented before parliament in June last year.

"The BTRC has sent many letters to the BTCL to pay its dues," the CAG report said, adding that all calls had fallen on deaf ears.

The BTRC chairman then wrote to the posts and telecommunications division's secretary, who is also serving as BTCL chairman, seeking his intervention. But those efforts were also in vain, according to the report.

The CAG audit team also found that BTCL's internal control system was weak and there was no responsible officer or cell to monitor it.

The CAG further found that the guidelines issued by the National Board of Revenue for the collection of value-added tax and income tax were not being followed by different departments of BTCL. No register is maintained properly in this regard, it said.

What is more damning is that the CAG found no trace of any internal audit system. The independent audit agency could not find even a single report from the previous year.

Asked about the dues unearthed by the CAG audit, a BTCL official said a portion of the dues had been cleared already in instalments. Despite that, it owes over Tk 1,100 crore.

BTCL's annual report showed it made a profit of Tk 6.71 crore in FY 2023 and 14.5 crore in FY 2022.

Similarly, state-run mobile network operator Teletalk has been failing to pay different dues to the BTRC.

Teletalk also became the only mobile operator to lose customers in 2023 despite the government flooding it with funds for different projects.

In November last year, its customer base dropped by three lakh year-on-year, falling to 64.6 lakh, which is 3.39 percent of the total mobile subscriber base in the country.

Teletalk's losses amounted to Tk 197 crore in FY23 and Tk 244.42 crore in FY22.

"The officials of BTCL had been leading BTRC for many years until the recent past. The problem is that the chairman of both BTCL and Teletalk is a secretary of the telecom ministry, which is a huge conflict of interest," said Abu Saeed Khan, a senior policy fellow at LIRNEasia.

"It's because secretaries are never held responsible for such non-payments. At the same time, BTRC reports to the ministry. So it is a peculiar scenario and it set a very bad example of non-payment."

"Such non-payment inspires other private companies in telecom sector, including IIGs, to default willfully."