Cellphone operators are reluctant to pay heed to the finance ministry's proposal of paying the principal amount of the SIM replacement tax, which insiders say could throw $630 million spectrum auction into uncertainty.
The ministry had proposed that the defaulting operators--Grameenphone, Banglalink, Robi and Airtel--pay around Tk 21 billion in tax instead of Tk30.12 billion as claimed by the National Board of Revenue (NBR). The revenue board's claim includes around Tk10 billion in interests.
"We've verbally declined to pay the replacement tax," a senior official of Robi Axiata Ltd told the FE.
The Finance Ministry's proposal had come after a meeting with the mobile phone operators, revenue board and Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) in April.
The Robi official, who was involved in the negotiation process, said the revenue board made the claims based on random sampling.
"This is very funny. Tax must not be based on a hypothesis or statistical survey," said the official.
The official said operators are now considering proposing the government to go for an 'international arbitration' to settle the tax dispute as local efforts proved to be futile.
If the government agrees, he said his company is ready to go for international arbitration bodies such as World Bank's International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes.
He cited the dispute settlement between the US oil company Chevron and state-run oil and gas company Petrobangla as a recent example of global arbitration.
When contacted, Mahmud Hossain, chief corporate affairs officer at Grameenphone, said there was no 'visible' progress to resolve the tax dispute.
"However, we're still hopeful about getting a solution based on the interim report, which was prepared by all including the regulator, revenue board and operators," Mr Hossain said.
Mobile operators said they owe Tk2.51 billion only as they found 12.26 per cent SIMs of Grameenphone, 4.83 per cent of Banglalink, 3 per cent of Robi and 0.36 per cent of Airtel to be taxable.
In 2012, the revenue board claimed Tk 30.12 billion from the operators -Grameenphone, Banglalink, Robi and Airtel, arguing that the operators had resold the SIM cards and dodged taxes during July 2009 to December 2011.
But operators said the SIMs were issued for replacement of the lost or damaged ones. The dispute later dragged onto the Supreme Court, which asked the NBR to resolve the issue.
The tax issue is also linked to the spectrum auction, which was long delayed as operators refused to take part in the bidding until resolution of the dispute.
The companies had sought intervention by the finance minister AMA Muhith to settle the long pending dispute before holding the spectrum auction, which is now postponed for an indefinite period.
The BTRC secretary Md. Sarwar Alam said they sent the draft guidelines on the auction to the ministry of posts, telecommunication and information technology for approval.
"We'll announce the fresh schedule soon after getting the ministry's approval," he said.
The telecom watchdog has already completed groundwork to hold the mega auction for 15 megahertz (MHz) and 10.6MHz in the respective slot of 2,100MHz and 1,800 MHz.
According to the guidelines, the government has fixed US$ 30 million as the base price for per MHz in 1,800 band and $ 22 million for per MHz in 2,100 band.
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