20000324

Egyptian firm

to buy 26 pc stake

in Pak Mobilink

CAIRO: Egypt's private sector telecommunications company Orascom Telecom said on Thursday it plans to buy a 26 percent stake in Pakistani mobile telephone network Mobilink.

"The accord has not yet been signed, but we're in the final stage of negotiations," an official with the Egyptian company's press service said without specifying how much the deal would cost.

A member of Orascom Telecom's board of directors, Alex Shalabi, told Thursday's edition of the economic daily newspaper Al-Alam Al-Yum he had accompanied the firm's president Naguib Sawiris to Islamabad last week to finalise the deal.

"The contract should be signed in the coming days," he said.

Shalabi said the deal was an important matter for his company due to the site of the Pakistani market, "which is developing very fast."

Orascom Telecom signed a 413 million dollar contract in January to buy 80 percent of TeleCell, the company that runs the mobile telephone networks of 12 African countries.

The Egyptian company also owns 28 percent of MobiNil, Egypt's largest mobile telephone company, 63 percent of the Jordanian mobile phone company Fastlink, and 65 percent of Liberties, which runs Africa's second mobile phone network.

It has also signed a deal with the German firm Siemens to operate the first Global System for Mobile (GSM) Communications in Syria.ÑAFP