BSNL manages to pay July salaries, but cash crunch still severe

Ailing public sector telecom firm BSNL might have managed to pay off its employee salaries for July on Monday this week, but it still struggles with a Rs 800-odd crore gap between its monthly revenues and expenses, a large portion of which goes into meeting its wage bill. Unless the company manages to bridge this gap, it will continue to struggle to meet its operational expenses, officials said.

While a revival plan for BSNL and MTNL formulated by the telecom ministry is likely to be taken up for examination by the Union Cabinet soon, the company is also emabarking on several other ways to reduce its expenses. According to reports the company’s chairman and managing director PK Purwar said this week that the firm is “reviewing the functions that are currently outsourced to see if they can be streamlined or if some of that work can be done in-house”.