NEW DELHI, INDIA: In the last month of his tenure at Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited, Kuldeep Goyal, Chairman and Managing Director of the company, expressed regrets at the company's inability to control losses and also for not maintaining the growth as per his vision.

“I have deep regrets for not being able to maintain the growth of the company as per my expectation. I expected to keep it at 20 to 30 per cent year-on-year growth but was unable to do so. Second thing, I could not control the losses that the company made,” said Goyal.

He made this observation on Thursday on the sidelines of an event announcing a tie-up between Union Bank of India and BSNL, when he was asked about one the thing that he could have done but was unable to do at BSNL.

Goyal’s tenure as the CMD of BSNL will end on July 31.

Goyal did not point out specific reason for being unable to achieve business targets set by him. However, it is understood that there are a number of reason associated with the depleting profit of the company, which were practically out of Goyal’s control.

Even Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had showed concern over the losses of BSNL and formed a panel headed by Sam Pitroda to give recommendation on improving financial condition of the company.

In February this year, Pitroda panel suggested 15 measures to improve the condition of BSNL. These recommendations have not been easy for even the Department of Telecom to implement and DoT would set up a committee to consider these proposals.

This committee has also suggested that  new CMD for BSNL should be from the private sector, for which a search committee had been formed and the search for new BSNL CMD is still on.

In December 2009, BSNL’s net profit was Rs. 178 crore compared to Rs. 574.85 crore. Gurudas Kamat, Minister of State for Information Technology and Communications in a statement on BSNL at parliament had pointed out that these losses had been due to the reduction in number of landlines and withdrawal of financial support from government such as abolition of access deficit charges.

At the event today, BSNL announced agreement with Union Bank of India under which common customers of BSNL and UBI will be able to top-up their mobile by one time registration. Similarly UBI account holders will be able to pay BSNL mobile phone bill through their mobile phone. BSNL customers will also be able to make payments at UBI ATMs and collect receipt of the same immediately from the ATM.

Goyal mentioned that BSNL will extend this facility for its customers with other banks as well.

“In six months' time, we will provide this kind of service with almost all of the leading banks,” said Goyal.