In today’s world, the role of the telecom sector is indisputable. It lays the foundation for our world going towards digital by cutting horizontally across all businesses. The advent of Covid19 has catalyzed this trend further. Hence it is important for all of us that the sector stays healthy so that resources available are efficiently and optimally used without any wastage. Doing so will elevate the contribution of all stakeholders, thereby enhancing the growth of the Indian economy. The purpose of this note is to analyze how the health of the telecom sector will get impacted if VI is unable to survive due to the burden of its huge debt (mostly on account of License fees and spectrum auction payments), and what are the possible solutions to bail VI out of this situation.
VI’s Debt Obligations
To understand VI’s debt obligation one needs to look at page 280 of its annual report of 31st March 2022. This is reproduced in the following table as under.
