State run telecom firm BSNL is expected to garner revenue of Rs 29,000 crore in FY 2014-15. The company also believes that it can manage a growth rate of 4 to 5 percent by the end of this fiscal year, its CMD said.
“At a growth rate of 4 % to 5%, we hope to cross Rs 29,000 crore this year,” BSNL CMD Anupam Shrivastava told TeleAnalysis.
The company has been going through a rough phase in the last few years and had reported loss in the last five fiscals in a row. However, the PSU expects to become EBIDTA positive this year.
“In FY 2014-15, we would be operational profit or EBITDA comfortable,” he added.
The last profit it had reported was in 2009 when it reported a profit of Rs 575 crore. Since then it has reported loss.
In FY 2014 BSNL had reported a loss of Rs 7,085 crore compared to a loss of Rs 7,884 crore in FY13 and Rs 8,851 crore in FY 2012, showing improvement over the last three fiscals.
“We plan to be profitable by FY 2018-19,” Shrivastava added.
It had reported a loss of Rs 6,384 crore in FY2011 and Rs 1,823 crore in FY10.
The company is working on multiple projects this year including National Optic Fibre Network (NOFN), NFS for defence and LWE project for the naxal hit areas.
The company is also planning to complete the phase 7 expansion of its networks by which it will add another 15 million lines to its existing network.
The adding of 15 million lines was a part of BSNL’s Phase 7 expansion plan for which the company is investing around Rs 4,804 crore.
“The project is planned to be completed by June 2015,” Shrivastava told TeleAnalysis earlier. “We have completed more than 60% of the project so far,” he had said.
The Phase 7 of BSNL was planned to upgrade the state run operator’s existing and old network by creating 15 million additional mobile capacity. The capacity addition will take care for both 2G and 3G. In Phase 7, BSNL is building 27,000 towers of which 15,000 will be for 2G and 12,000 for 3G. Presently, BSNL has around 97,000 towers. Phase 7 will help in plugging the gap of 2G, removing blind spots in mobile network and increasing data capacity by 30-40 times.
