Emirates Telecommunications Corp (Etisalat) will postpone a planned 1.8 billion dirham bond issue because it has sufficient cash to fund expansion, its chairman said. "Maybe we will issue the bond at a later stage, but we still haven''t decided when," Mohamed Omran, chairman of the Gulf Arab region''s second-largest telecom firm, said on Thursday.
Asked when Etisalat planned to make a payment of $800 million to Pakistan for a stake in Pakistan Telecommunication Co, Omran said: "We have the money and will only make the payment once all the land is transferred". In 2006, Etisalat signed an agreement to buy a 26 percent stake in PTCL for $2.6 billion. So far, only $1.4 billion has been paid because of problems linked with a transfer of 3,000 real estate units.
Under the contract, the government agreed to transfer the properties before Etisalat made the full payment. This week, Pakistan said it expected Etisalat to make the payment by the end of March, according to Pakistan''s Minister of Privatisation Waqar Ahmed Khan.
"If the minister is confident that this will happen in March then we will pay in March," said Omran. Etisalat has faced increased competition in its home market after its monopoly was broken in 2007 by Dubai-based du. Etisalat, operating in 18 countries, including Egypt and India, is one of a number of Gulf Arab telecom operators to have expanded overseas after losing their monopoly at home.