Government on the verge to accept the deal from Etisalat for settling long-pending dues

The UAE’s popular Telecom Company. Etisalat holds 26% shares for Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited formally known as PTCL. Etisalat has offered around $267 billion to resolve an age-old dispute with the national telecom company.

Dr. Hafeez Shaikh the advisory of Prime Minister for Finance and Revenue stated in an official statement: ”We want to move beyond the status quo maintained on the issue for over a decade and bring the matter to a final settlement beneficial for our country and our long term business interests.”

Dr. Shaikh chaired an inter-ministerial meet up regarding the pending payment by Etisalat. The Minister of Information and Technology Khalid Maqbool along with the privatization secretary commission Rizwan Malik and finance secretary Naveed Kamran Baloch attended the meeting.

According to Dawn News, Etisalat tried winding up the deal with $275 million. Pakistan previously requested Etisalat to deduct $60 million out of $800 Million. With a comprehensive collaboration, a final offer submitted by the UAE telecom company was not more than $275 million.

Dr. Sheikh firmly believed that acquiring a decent payment is better against an overdue payment that was unable to be materialized from the past 13 years. Etisalat had earned PKR 80 billion after taking over the management control of PTCL.
In July of 2005, Etisalat acquired a 26% stake of PTCL along with management control of PTCL after paying $2.6 Billion. Once the UAE-based company got to know about the last bid that was placed on $1.4 Billion, Etisalat tried to backtrack from the deal.

Dr. Hafeez was the privatization Minister back in 2010 when the company was trying to lure Etisalat to file for initial payment for $1.4 Billion and the rest of the amount in 9-month installments by September of 2010.

PTCL is going through a difficult phase as the market shares of the company are going down to 13.5%. As per the balance sheet published by the company, the revenue generated from January till September was PKR. 53.55 billion whereas the revenue for the same months in 2019 is PKR 53.77 billion. The profits stood the same with some minor differences.

Pakistan had blocked the Technical Service Assistance Fee collected yearly as the Etisalat withheld the privatization dues. According to the financial balance sheet of PTCL, PTCL has to pay PKR 20.2 billion to Etisalat on account of the Technical Service Assistance Fee.

The Government officials will either send its reply to Etisalat in writing or call over its delegation to Pakistan for further discussion.