Court asks it to pay Tk 24cr to distributor
Md Hasan
After a two-year legal battle, an arbitration tribunal recently ordered Grameenphone to pay more than Tk 24 crore to Communic Park Ltd, a local distributor of Grameenphone subscriber identification module (SIM) cards.
The verdict was in response to a Tk 45.30 crore lawsuit filed by Communic, alleging that Grameenphone had been refusing to pay the SIM distributor its due commission for sales of the cards.
The amount the court ordered Grameen to pay Communic, comprises Tk 12.18 crore commission for sales of 1.66 lakh connections, Tk 6.53 crore bank interest on unpaid commission, Tk 3 lakh refund of the deposit paid by Communic to Grameen at the time of signing the contract, Tk 5 crore as compensation to the distributor for loss of business opportunity, Tk 47.8 lakh as cost of the arbitration, and Tk 1 crore refund of the bank guarantee put up by Communic at the time of signing the contract.
“We’ve received the arbitration order, and are dealing with it legally,” said a Grameenphone statement yesterday.
The telecom industry insiders said the judgement is remarkable, as it will encourage telecom operators to pay their backward linkage industry partners on time.
“Not only distributors but telecom operators are also hesitant to pay their business partners on time,” said a high official of a value added service provider.
Grameenphone is a joint venture company owned 62 percent by Telenor and 38 percent by Grameen Telecom Corporation. The company is currently at the final stage of being listed on the country’s capital market, waiting stock market regulator’s nod.
Communic Park Ltd used to be a sole distributor of Grameenphone SIM cards between November 2004 and December 2005, selling Grameen’s connections to retailers nationwide.
According to the deal signed between the two companies, Grameen was responsible for paying commission to Communic on monthly sales of the cards, which had been fixed at Tk 850 to Tk 1,250 depending on types of services sold.
The date of expiry of the deal was December 31, 2005. Communic in the meantime had sold 1,66,266 Grameen connections, it claimed.
According to the deal Communic claimed Tk 23.19 crore in commission, and Grameen paid Tk 7.69 crore refusing to pay the remaining Tk 15.50 crore.
According to the court verdict, Grameenphone showed unwillingness to pay the remainder of the commission to Communic even after repeated plea from the distributor.
Instead, Grameen discontinued the deal with Communic without any official declaration, as it had already revised its distribution policy in mid 2005, the judgment said.
Communic Park Ltd officials said failing to recover the unpaid commission from Grameenphone despite repeated efforts, seeing no other alternative Communic filed the lawsuit and sent a legal notice to Grameen in September 2006.
Then after a two-year of hearing, Justice Syed Amirul Islam, the sole arbitrator of the court, on December 31 pronounced the judgment in favour of Communic.
“We hope Grameenphone will accept the court verdict,” said Md Anis Farooq, chairman of Communic Group, adding, “The unpaid money in the meantime made us a loan defaulter.”
Courtesy: thedailystar.net
