Country’s leading mobile phone operator Grameenphone on Tuesday reported Tk 516.01 crore profit in January-March period of 2014 compared to that of Tk 453.96 crore in the same period of previous year. The earnings per share of the company is Tk 3.82 after the first quarter compared to that of Tk 3.36 at the same period of 2013. The revenue growth of GP was 6.1 per cent to Tk 24.9 billion in the January-March period of the current year compared to Tk 23.5 billion in the same period of the previous year.
GP chief executive officer Vivek Sood said the improving political and economic situation healed the wound of the previous quarter which was troublesome because of political unrest.
‘We lived up to our commitment and managed to bring all the 64 district headquarters under 3G coverage. Quarter saw good development in data driven by our efforts to enable and stimulate use for it,’ he said.
He also said that 4 per cent of the revenue is coming from data services at the moment.
Responding to a question Vivek said there is misunderstanding among government high-ups and revenue board field officials which is lingering the settlement of tax claim of Tk 3,010 crore from four mobile phone companies.
‘We had a discussion with the highly placed government officials about SIM replacement tax issue and got a positive response. But the field operatives of National Board of Revenue are not aligned with the high-ups,’ said Vivek.
He said that GP and other mobile phone operators have disagreement with the process that NBR committee for settling the SIM replacement tax issue is following.
‘I hope political will and initiative of the finance minister shall resolve the matter,’ he said.
An NBR committee on SIM replacement tax in its fresh final report last month maintained its claim for Tk 3,010.99 crore in tax from four mobile operators — Grameenphone, Robi, Banglalink and Airtel.
The NBR has been demanding the amount in tax since early 2012 claiming that the operators had dodged the tax through selling old SIMs to new clients.
The mobile phone companies, however, denied the allegation saying that they did not sell any SIM to new clients but replaced the old SIMs for the original customers.
-With New Age input
