Sunil Mittal's Bharti Airtel pays nearly Rs 6000 crore to govt; here's why

Indian billionaire Sunil Mittal runs the second largest company in India, Bharti Airtel. The telecom company gives tough competition to Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Jio. The Mittal-led company on Wednesday revealed that it prepaid an additional Rs 5,985 crore, along with its subsidiary Bharti Hexacom Ltd, of high-cost debt for spectrum to the Department of Telecom. Now, it has fully prepaid the high-cost interest liabilities of 8.65 per cent pertaining to the 2024 auctions.

Airtel's subsidiary Network i2i Ltd. has also voluntarily called and redeemed USD 1 billion in Perpetual Notes, the company. said. Airtel continues to prepay its high-cost spectrum liabilities, lowering its debt and cost of debt, underscoring its commitment to financial prudence, operational efficiency, and its strong capital position, the company said.

The release added that Airtel has now prepaid Rs. 25,981 crores of high-cost spectrum liabilities for the current 2025 fiscal year and has cumulatively prepaid spectrum liabilities of Rs 66,665 crores as on date. The average interest rate on the cumulative liabilities prepaid was approximately 9.74 per cent. Airtel had earlier fully prepaid liabilities that had interest rates of 10 per cent, 9.75 per cent and 9.3 per cent. These prepayments have been made about 7 years ahead of their average residual maturities, the company said.

READ | 8th Pay Commission: New report claims govt employees' salaries may increase up to Rs...

The prepayments have resulted in Airtel clearing Rs 116,405 crores of scheduled instalments that would have otherwise been payable on their respective dates over the original tenure of the liabilities, as per the release. Consequent to these payments, Airtel has also lowered its cost of debt on spectrum liabilities to an average of approximately 7.22 per cent on the residual Rs. 52,000 crores of spectrum liabilities (excluding AGR liabilities).

(With inputs from ANI)