PHILIPPINE TELEGRAPH and Telephone Corp. (PT&T) on Wednesday said the Court of Appeals (CA) has ordered the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) to recompute the amount of supervisory and regulatory fees (SRF) that the company has to pay.
In a disclosure to the stock exchange, PT&T said: “On 11 December 2019, PT&T received a decision rendered by the Court of Appeals which set aside the order of the NTC on the amount of the SRF that PT&T is obligated to pay.”
It added: “The Court of Appeals likewise remanded the case to NTC for the recomputation of the correct amount of SRF to be paid by PTT.”
PT&T filed last year a petition with the CA questioning the amount of SRF imposed on the company by the NTC.
“While PTT is required to pay an annual SRF, the amount PT&T is being required to pay under the 28 September 2018 Decision of the NTC is inaccurate for the same was computed by the NTC based on its erroneous assumption of PT&T’s paid-up capital,” the company said in a disclosure to the stock exchange in October last year.
In a Sept. 28 decision, the NTC asked PT&T to pay a total SRF of P444 million — broken down as P330 million for the period from 2002 to 2015; and P114 million from 2016 to 2017. It said the SRF for the 2002 to 2015 period was based on PT&T’s paid-in capital of P8.712 billion, as computed in a resolution it released on March 31, 2017.
Although it acknowledged that PT&T’s annual reports showed the additional paid-in capital is P2.054 billion, the NTC said it could not overturn its own decision because the company failed to file an appeal within 15 days from its issuance.
On Feb. 28, 2018, the company filed an appeal with the NTC to recompute the SRF, almost a year after the resolution was released.
As for the SRF from 2016 to 2017, the NTC said this was based on PT&T’s paid-in capital of P10.766 billion, as indicated in its March 31, 2017 decision. — Arjay L. Balinbin
