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Business News/ Industry / Telecom/  New valuation pegs BSNL’s prime land at Rs65,000 crore: CMD
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New valuation pegs BSNL’s prime land at Rs65,000 crore: CMD

BSNL's one-third of prime land holdings alone is estimated to be now worth Rs65,000 crore, way higher than the book value of Rs975 crore for its entire land assets recorded decades ago

Bharat Sanchar Nigam (BSNL) had a ‘book value’ of Rs975 crore for the 15,000-odd land and building assets it holds. Photo: Hemant Mishra/MintPremium
Bharat Sanchar Nigam (BSNL) had a ‘book value’ of Rs975 crore for the 15,000-odd land and building assets it holds. Photo: Hemant Mishra/Mint

New Delhi: BSNL’s one-third of prime land holdings alone is estimated to be now worth Rs65,000 crore, way higher than the book value of Rs975 crore for its entire land assets recorded decades ago, a senior company official said.

Bharat Sanchar Nigam (BSNL) had a ‘book value’ of Rs975 crore for the 15,000-odd land and building assets it holds, Chairman and Managing Director Anupam Shrivastava said. This valuation was arrived at decades back, and in order to reflect a true picture the company got a reassessment done using the ‘fair value’ method.

BSNL -- figured among the top loss making firms with a net loss of about Rs3,880 crore in the government’s Public Enterprises Survey 2015-16 -- initiated the valuation exercise as part of project ‘Vasundhara’ in April this year. KPMG was roped in as a consultant for the project, which is now nearing completion.

The exercise, done alongside the aggressive business revival plans the company pursues, saw one-third of the freehold land assets, mostly in prime locations in major cities being reassessed at the current market value.

“We decided to go for fair valuation of a third of our land parcels...freehold land. For entire land holding, the ‘book value’ was so far Rs975 crore in our books of account. With this, the fair valuation has been estimated at about Rs65,000 crore just for one-third of land parcels," he told PTI here.

According to Shrivastava, the valuation was taken up as part of a “special window allowed under the Indian Accounting Standard". “We were informed by our consultant KPMG that a window of opportunity was provided for this year, for all companies... So we are among companies that have undertaken this exercise of fair valuation of the land parcels," he said.

The valuation exercise is “97-98% complete", he added. The valuation includes land parcels in Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Lucknow, Chennai and Kolkata, among others. “The land on which BSNL has its corporate office has itself been valued at nearly Rs2,500 crore," he added. Asked why the corporation cherry-picked only a third of its land holding for valuation, he said that the land included in the exercise was “most lucrative".

“There is cost to the valuation, as it has to be done by certified valuers. We thought it worthwhile to only go for one-third (of holding) as it includes the prime land parcels. The incremental value for the rest, will not be exponentially higher," he pointed out.

Shrivastava said that the valuation will reflect as part of the networth in BSNL’s latest books of accounts, and would be useful in case the telecom PSU wants to monetise its assets, by commercially utilising its holding in future.

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Published: 30 Jul 2017, 03:05 PM IST
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