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Government blames CAG for poor 2G show, to
hold another round
Friday November 16, 2012 10:21:18 PM,
IANS
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New Delhi: Smarting under the poor response to the
2G auction, the government Friday said it would try to sell
spectrum in circles where there were no bidders by the end of this
fiscal.
Communications Minister Kapil Sibal said an empowered group of
ministers (EGoM) headed by Finance Minister P. Chidambaram would
meet soon to decide on the price and date for the auction in
circles such as Delhi and Mumbai.
With Chidambaram and Information and Broadcasting Minister Manish
Tewari by his side, Sibal addressed a media conference just days
ahead of parliament's winter session and rejected opposition
allegations that the government was "celebrating" the auction
failure, and claimed that some Rs.40,000 crore could still be
garnered form the sale of radio waves.
Sibal also sought to shift the blame on the Comptroller and
Auditor General for the dismal show and "sensationalism" over the
auditor's presumptive loss figure of Rs.1.76 lakh crore.
"Where are those Rs.1.76 lakh crore?" he asked, adding "government
getting revenue cannot be the sole criterion" for policy.
"You cannot extrapolate figures and sensationalize them and
destroy the hen that laid the golden egg... Sensationalism took
over and government was limited in its policy prescriptions which
has resulted in what we saw a few days ago," said Sibal.
Sibal said the government got more than Rs.1 lakh crore from the
auction of 3G spectrum, which was used by the CAG to base its
presumptive loss. "But the customer got nothing" as there was no
roll-out of 3G services.
The government had set a reserve price of Rs.14,000 crore for
pan-India spectrum on the basis of CAG's assumption of Rs.1.76
lakh crore loss caused to the exchequer in the previous sale in
2008. It managed a meagre Rs.9,407.64 crore in the auction that
lasted barely two days.
"The telecom story is no longer a story that we can talk about to
the rest of the world," said Sibal. "People ask me the question,
what happened? And quite frankly, I have no answers."
"All I can say is that certain events took place and there was a
level of sensationalism that took over and the government was, in
a sense, limited in its policy prescriptions and had to move
forward in a certain way which ultimately has resulted in what we
have seen couple of days ago."
Finance Minister P. Chidambram said the auction that ended
Wednesday was not a success or a failure as the process had not
been completed yet.
"The auction process is incomplete. There are four more GSM
circles, CDMA, reframing... there will be more auctions before
March."
Chidambaram said that there would be substantial net gains to the
government after the process was over and one-time spectrum fees
were adjusted.
But the main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party would take none of
this and said the government had "mismanaged" the telecom sector.
"The failure of the 2G spectrum auction is an example of the
direction in which this government was taking the country's
economy to," said senior leader Arun Jaitley.
Former finance minister Yashwant Sinha said the government's
policies were responsible for the low bidding.
"They (UPA government) first destroyed the telecom sector, a
sector which is the real success story of economic liberalisation
in India....Having destroyed the market and the sector, how would
you expect that people would come forward and bid the amounts that
you are expecting."
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