Hit by slow business growth in Europe as well as India,telecom giant Vodafone today reported 7.7 per cent decline in revenues at 10.7 billion pound (Rs 92,755 crore) for the quarter ended June 30,2012. The company's revenues stood at GBP 11.6 billion in the corresponding period last year,Vodafone said in a statement,without disclosing its profit/loss numbers. Its revenues in India declined 1 per cent to GBP 1.02 billion (Rs 8,842 crore) in the reported quarter,from GBP 1.03 billion in the same quarter last year. On India,Vodafone said,"Q1 saw the introduction of regulatory changes which impacted on the way integrated tariffs can be offered to customers. There was also a lower rate of growth at Indus Towers following a slow down in tenancies from new entrants and a change in the pricing structure for some existing customers. However,the organic revenues in India grew at 16.2 per cent and Vodafone attributed the growth to 8.6 per cent increase in the closing customer base,strong growth in incoming and outgoing mobile voice minutes and 1.6 per cent growth in the effective outgoing rate per minute. The company's revenues from Europe also declined by 1.6 per cent,compared to a decline of 0.2 per cent in the previous quarter. UK service revenue fell by 0.8 per cent,while in the Netherlands,a temporary network outage led to a service revenue decline of 1.5 per cent. In Italy,service revenue declined by 7.7 per cent,while in Spain,the same fell by 10.0 per cent. Despite the difficult market conditions,particularly in southern Europe,we continue to make progress in the key areas of data,enterprise and emerging markets,while maintaining tight control of our cost base," Vodafone Chief Executive Officer Vittorio Colao said. Data revenue in India grew by 12.4 per cent driven by the increase in data customers and higher penetration of data enabled handsets as well as successful promotions. Vodafone India's active data customers stood at about 31 million,including around 1.7 million 3G data customers as on June 30,2012. Vodafone has over 150 million subscribers in India,while the group's overall userbase stood at 404.6 million at the end of June 30,2012. The company,however,did not mention anything on its impending tax case in India. .the Indian Finance Bill,2012 received Presidential assent and became law on 29 May 2012, Vodafone said but did not specify if it has made any provisions for the tax. The Indian government is looking at charging Vodafone Rs 20,000 crore in capital gains tax on its deal with Hutchison Whampoa in 2007.
