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By Aditi Shah and Devidutta Tripathy
NEW DELHI, Oct 7 (Reuters) - India said on Friday it willconsider re-auctioning mobile phone spectrum that remainedunsold in a sale this week when the financial situation of itstelecoms companies improves.
The government raised $9.9 billion from a spectrum auction that ended on Thursday, but there were no takers for themost-efficient yet priciest 700 megahertz band of airwaves andonly 40 percent of the total on offer was sold.
Indian telecoms services are among the cheapest in theworld, making margins relatively lower than elsewhere andputting pressure on carriers' finances, with local ratingsagency ICRA forecasting their combined debt to rise to 4.25trillion rupees ($64 billion) after funding the latest sale.
"If their financial situation is not good, and they can'tbuy it now, what is the guarantee that they will be able to ifwe do another auction immediately," Telecoms Minister ManojSinha told reporters, when asked about the unsold airwaves.
"So, we will take the appropriate decision at theappropriate time."
Telecoms Secretary J.S. Deepak separately told Reuters thatthe ministry was on course to achieve its revenue target set bythe finance ministry, despite earning far less than he budgeted645 billion rupees from the auction.
Deepak said the government will decide later on whether toconsider cutting the price of the 700 band airwaves.
The telecoms ministry will get a minimum of 320 billionrupees upfront as carriers are allowed to pay in instalments.
Vodafone Group Plc was the top spender in theauction with 202.8 billion rupees worth of bids, followed byBharti Airtel's 142.44 billion rupees, according togovernment data released on Friday.
Reliance Jio Infocomm bought airwaves worth 136.72 billionrupees, Idea Cellular spent 127.98 billion rupees, andTata Teleservices bid for 46.19 billion rupees. ($1 = 66.7349 Indian rupees) (Editing by Alexander Smith)
