Bharti Airtel on Friday said it has prepaid Rs 7,904 crore to the Department of Telecom, thus clearing the expensive deferred liabilities towards the spectrum acquired by it in 2012 and 2015. In a notification to the stock exchange, the company said that it has fully cleared the entire deferred liabilities pertaining to 2012 and 2015, which were charging steep interest of 9.75% and 10%, respectively.
As a matter of fact, in January this year Airtel paid Rs 8,325 crore to the government towards spectrum liabilities that it owed since the purchase made in 2015. In the 2015 auction, Airtel has acquired 111.6 MHz of spectrum for Rs 29,130.20 crore and according to the rules, the company had paid an upfront payment of Rs 7,832.58 crore. Before that, in July last year Airtel prepaid Rs 8,024 crore to clear the liabilities accrued on the 2015 spectrum purchase.
At the same time, Airtel also has been quick to point out that it still has a wide range of capital and financing sources. The diversity in them gives the company the immense flexibility of its finances that it can flaunt. In the process, the strategy also empowers it to take an optimum view about its financing costs, too. As part of it, it can avail the opportunity of making huge interest savings in the process, including through such prepayments.
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