LDI Companies Owe Rs84 Billion in Unpaid Dues, Senate Panel Told

Long Distance International operators now owe the government roughly Rs84 billion, the Senate Standing Committee on Information Technology and Telecom was told this week, a figure that has climbed steadily for more than a decade as unpaid principal keeps accumulating late-payment surcharges.

Of that total, Rs24 billion is outstanding principal. The remaining Rs60 billion is late payment surcharge, meaning penalties have grown to nearly two and a half times the original amount owed. The committee, chaired by Senator Palwasha Khan, reviewed the long-running non-recovery issue and was briefed on what officials described as progress toward resolving it.

A Decade-Old Dispute That Keeps Growing

This isn’t a new problem surfacing for the first time. The core dues trace back to 2009 and 2011, and the total figure reported to Parliament has risen almost every time the issue has come up: roughly Rs70 billion in mid-2025, Rs78 billion by August, Rs80 billion shortly after, and now Rs84 billion. The gap between those numbers is almost entirely surcharge accumulating on principal that hasn’t moved.

The Ministry of IT and Telecom told the committee that licences belonging to the LDI companies in question had expired, after which PTA held hearings and issued formal orders against them. The companies responded by challenging those orders in court rather than settling, which is where much of the delay has come from. A PTA representative said 38 cases involving LDI companies are currently pending before various judicial forums, and that the authority has written to the Attorney General of Pakistan and raised the matter before those courts directly.

Some companies have taken a different path. Of 13 LDI licences scheduled for renewal, four, Telenor, Orient, LinkDOTNet and ADG, cleared their obligations and had their licences renewed in 2024. Others, including WorldCall, Wateen, Telecard, Dancom, Redtone, Wise Communication and Circle Net, continued operating under court protection while their cases remained unresolved. PTA suspended the licences of five LDI operators outright in August after courts dismissed their petitions challenging the regulator’s authority to demand the charges.

The Tribunal Now Entering the Picture

The one structural change officials pointed to is the Telecom Tribunal, which the ministry confirmed has been formally inaugurated, with its chairman and members appointed and operations under way. Twenty of the pending LDI cases have already been transferred to it.

This tribunal has been promised for a long time without materializing. As recently as February, officials told a National Assembly committee that it hadn’t yet been activated, even as members pushed to move stalled cases there. By November, the Law Ministry was telling lawmakers the summary for appointing its chairman and members had only just been sent forward. Its actual inauguration now gives the recovery process a venue that didn’t functionally exist for most of this dispute’s history.

The Ministry of IT representative told the committee that the tribunal would allow faster hearings and quicker disposal of telecom disputes generally, not just the LDI cases. But the committee was also told that companies retain the right to appeal any tribunal decision to the Supreme Court, meaning the tribunal shortens one stage of a dispute that could still stretch through a further round of litigation.

Why the Stakes Go Beyond the Money

The Rs84 billion figure is significant on its own, but the disruption risk tied to it has been part of this debate for a while. PTA has previously warned that suspending LDI operators’ licences outright could cause up to 50 percent disruption to ATM services, since much of the country’s banking infrastructure runs through LDI networks for transaction routing. That risk is part of why the regulator has cycled through options, escrow deposits, installment plans, licence suspension, rather than moving straight to blanket cancellations, even as the outstanding balance has kept growing.

It also explains why earlier committee members have pushed back against leniency. In a previous session, a National Assembly committee member argued installment-based repayment should be a last resort rather than a starting position, noting that many of the LDI operators earn revenue in foreign currency and are financially capable of paying what they owe.

What Happens Next

The Senate committee’s response this week followed a familiar pattern: it directed the relevant authorities to submit a progress report on recovery efforts and the status of pending cases at its next meeting. Whether that report shows movement will depend largely on how quickly the newly activated Telecom Tribunal can move the 20 transferred cases and whether the remaining 18 cases still before the courts see any resolution independent of it.

For now, the Rs84 billion keeps sitting on the government’s books, growing by however much surcharge accrues before the next hearing, a dynamic that has defined this dispute since well before the tribunal existed to hear it.