Pakistan Telecommunication Authority has experienced a sharp deterioration in its financial position over the past three fiscal years, with a new audit report revealing that its revenue has contracted by more than 62 percent while its expenditure has climbed by over 50 percent during the same period. The findings, published in the audit report by the Auditor General of Pakistan for the fiscal year 2024-25, paint a concerning picture of the regulator’s financial health and point to structural gaps in the country’s telecom revenue generation framework.
According to the audit report, the decline in revenue has been consistent and steep across three consecutive fiscal years. In FY 2022-23, PTA recorded total revenue of Rs. 94.179 billion. By FY 2023-24, that figure had fallen to Rs. 50.722 billion, a drop of nearly Rs. 43.5 billion in a single year alone. The downward trajectory continued into FY 2024-25, with revenue declining further to Rs. 35.349 billion, bringing the cumulative three-year decline to more than 62 percent. Meanwhile, the authority’s expenditure moved in the opposite direction. Total expenses stood at Rs. 3.32 billion in FY 2022-23, rose to Rs. 3.94 billion in FY 2023-24, and climbed further to Rs. 5 billion in FY 2024-25, representing a cumulative increase of more than 50 percent over the period.
Audit officials identified the prolonged delay in conducting the 5G spectrum auction as a principal factor behind the sustained revenue decline. The auction, which was widely anticipated to generate substantial licensing and spectrum-related earnings for PTA, has not taken place within the period under assessment, directly depriving the authority of income streams it had been expected to collect. The absence of 5G spectrum proceeds has left a significant gap in PTA’s finances that other revenue sources have been unable to fill, and the growing divergence between falling income and rising operational costs has placed increasing pressure on the regulator’s overall financial position.
The findings arrive at a time when Pakistan’s telecom sector is already under scrutiny over the pace of next-generation network rollout. The 5G auction has been delayed for several years, with various regulatory, policy, and commercial considerations cited at different stages. The audit report now adds a fiscal dimension to the consequences of that delay, making clear that the failure to conduct the auction has had a measurable and compounding impact on one of the government’s key non-tax revenue streams. With expenses continuing to rise and no spectrum auction revenue in sight for the years under review, the report underscores the urgency of resolving the outstanding issues that have kept Pakistan’s 5G transition stalled.
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