Bharti Airtel is looking to raise around Rs 21,000 crore ($3 billion) so that it can pay the Supreme Court-directed Adjusted Gross Revenue (AGR) dues. Its current cash flows are not large enough to pay the dues in full in a short period of time, according to a Business Standard report. The fundraising plans depend on the Supreme Court’s reaction to Bharti Airtel’s review petition against the top court’s verdict, the report said. MediaNama has reached out to Airtel for comment. While it won’t be very difficult for banks to offer fresh lending to Bharti Airtel, given its improved consolidated operations and market capitalisation, this funding might come at higher costs, the BS report said. Vodafone Idea is also planning to file a review petition challenging the SC’s AGR verdict, and if that doesn’t help, the company might consider filing a curative petition, CEO Ravinder Takkar said during a call with investors on November 15. What was SC’s verdict on AGR? Last month, the apex court had ordered telecom companies to include non-core income for calculation of Adjusted Gross Revenue (AGR), and asked them to pay Rs 92,640 crores to the Centre. This has hit Vodafone Idea and Bharti Airtel the most. Following the judgement, the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) wrote to the Department of Telecommunications, seeking its intervention, and argued that such payments would lead to a crisis at the companies and would cause distress to the sector as a whole. While Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Idea had backed COAI’s views in the…
