Etisalat seeks reduced price package for PTCL stake

ISLAMABAD—Etisalat has asked Pakistan to allow it to pay what was offered by the second highest bidder for buying 26 percent shares of the Pakistan Telecommunication Company Ltd (PTCL).
The second bidder (China Mobile) had offered an amount that was 84 percent less than the Etisalat offer and now they want to but it (PTCL) on the same rates, said an official of the Privatization Commission. Etisalat had made four demands from the government at the end of the second round of talks in Abu Dhabi last week which proves that the efforts of our minister proved futile, the official said.
They are offering only $1.06 billion; same amount was offered by the second highest bidder -- China Mobile - while they were supposed to pay $2.59 billion.
This is illegal and unethical and Privatization Commission officials should not have rushed to Dubai to deal with a defaulter company. Instead Pakistan should have declared them defaulters, official in the Privatization Commission told inp.
According to the highest bid Etisalat has to pay Rs107.01 per share compared to Rs63.48 per share offered by the second highest bidder. They said Etisalat was also not happy of the Rs 5 billion package offered by the government to the PTCL employees. It wanted to slash the
package to the size of Rs 1 billion - an amount that had been offered by the PTCL management earlier and was later increased by the information technology minister, Awais Laghari, due to mounting pressure from the PTCL workers' union. Any compromise on the package could lead to breaking off this silence of PTCL employees and a situation not different from what happened before the bidding of PTCL. Meanwhile, the commission officials confirmed that no delegation of Etisalat has come for third round of talks as expected.—INP