Estonia's finance minister on Wednesday said there were no immediate plans to sell the state's stake in Eesti Telekom within the next year, but he left the door open for a future sale. "I can say that there have been public discussions about selling the shares of Eesti Telekom, but the question of selling or not comes down to what is the best price, of course," Finance Minister Aivar Soerd told Reuters in an interview. "I am not going to discuss figures now, but, as with the private sector, a government sale is also dependent on the price," he added.
Finnish-Swedish telecoms group TeliaSonera, which mounted an abortive take-over bid for the Estonian group last year, currently has 50.2 percent of the shares, while the government retains a 27 percent holding.
TeliaSonera's bid last year - which formally ended on February 23 - foundered when the Baltic state's government rejected the offer, saying it would not sell "fast and cheap".
The Nordic region's biggest telecoms operator, which is seeking to diversify away from its mature core markets into high growth developing markets, offered to buy all the outstanding stock for 7.02 euros a share, valuing the Estonian group at around 970 million euros ($1.19 billion).
Last week Eesti Telekom, Estonia's leading telecoms company, reported first-quarter pretax profits up 7.9 percent at 344 million kroons ($28.7 million) on sales of 1.2 billion kroons.
TeliaSonera indicated on Wednesday that it was still keen to increase its stake in Eesti Telekom.
"Our long-term ambition is certainly to raise our ownership at a time and a price which we can justify to the market," spokesman Kjell Lindstrom told Reuters.
Linstrom said that at present there were no formal talks with the government, but that TeliaSonera wanted to increase its stake with the "equanimity" of all the larger shareholders.
Estonia's finance minister told Reuters his administration was in no hurry to sell out and that it had factored in the dividend income from the telecoms group for the forthcoming budgetary year.
"If you look at our (2006) budget strategy, we still expect dividends from Eesti Telekom," he said. "Dividends are a good source for our government revenue," he added.
TeliaSonera shares were trading up 0.5 percent at 36.90 crowns at 1408 GMT, outperforming the DJ Stoxx telecoms index, which was down 0.25 percent.
Shares in Eesti Telekom, which closed flat at 7.59 euros on Wednesday, have come off sharply from their year high of 8.60 euros and are now only slightly above the low of 7.10 euros.