Egypt will offer at least 20 percent of its national telecommunications firm, Telecom Egypt, on Egyptian and world markets at the end of October, information minister Safwat al-Sherif said Monday.
The initial public offering (IPO), which has been repeatedly delayed, is expected to bring Egypt between $1.2 and $1.4 billion, said Sherif who was quoted by the state-run MENA news agency. He added that an additional five percent of the company's shares would be offered to company employees.
The Egyptian cabinet agreed Monday that 10 percent of the company's shares will be floated on the Egyptian bourse while the remaining 10 percent will be offered on world markets, Sherif said without specifying which markets.
The government last announced that the IPO would be made in June, but it never materialized.
Egypt Telecom's assets are estimated at between 17 billion Egyptian pounds ($5 billion) and 19.5 billion pounds ($5.7 billion), according to independent evaluations.
Economy minister, Yussef Boutros-Ghali, said earlier this year that the company was growing at 20 percent a year.
Telecom Egypt currently has a monopoly over fixed local and international lines, but two private companies — MobiNil and Click — are competing in the mobile telephone market.
Sherif said the cabinet had agreed that Telecom Egypt would start offering a mobile phone service from December 2002. (AFP-Cairo)
© Agence France Presse 2000
© 2000 Mena Report (www.menareport.com)
