SC grants huge relief to RCOM, clears asset sale to Reliance Jio

New Delhi :  In a major relief to Reliance Communications (RCOM), the Supreme Court on Friday cleared the sale of its assets to Reliance Jio.

Accordingly, RCOM’s Special Leave Petition (SLP) was cleared by the Supreme Court. This allows for the sale of the company’s assets including spectrum, telecom towers, India optical fiber and multi-connectivity nodes.

The Supreme Court has also directed RCOM to make Rs 550 crore payment to Ericsson on or before September 30, 2018.

Industry insiders say that the relief granted by the Supreme Court paves the way for completion of the company’s asset monetisation programme, under which RCOM will sell these assets to Reliance Jio Infocomm.

The asset sale is expected to bring down RCOM’s debt by over 50 per cent or by around Rs 25,000 crore which includes around Rs 18,000 crore in cash and another Rs 7,000 crore in deferred spectrum payment liabilities, which will get transferred to Reliance Jio, as the new owner of the spectrum.

It is also expected to enable RCOM to reinstate the bank guarantees that were encashed by DoT (Department of Telecom) earlier this year on account of deferred spectrum payment liabilities.

In the second phase of assets sale, RCOM is expected to raise another Rs 3,700 crore by selling the its remaining 850 MHz spectrum assets, which may also go to Reliance Jio.

Sources pointed out that with these two asset sales, and monetisation of the company’s 133-acre Dhirubhai Ambani Knowledge City campus in Navi Mumbai and its 4-acre property in prime New Delhi, which will get in another Rs 10,000 crore, RCOM’s debt will be reduced by nearly Rs 39,000 crore.

 Published on: Aug 3, 2018 at 23:30 IST

IANS