Ministry aims for 2015 Mobifone equitisation

The Ministry of Information and Communications (MIC) will submit its equitisation plan for Mobifone to the Government by end-2014 and if approved, it will implement this plan in 2015.
The Ministry of Information and Communications (MIC) will submit itsequitisation plan for Mobifone to the Government by end-2014 and ifapproved, it will implement this plan in 2015.

At an industryseminar on October 6, Information and Communications Minister Nguyen BacSon said that among the 432 domestic enterprises to be equitised,Mobifone, the mobile telecommunications network operator, would make aconsiderable impact as it would attract a lot of investment capital.

Equitisation,or the partial privatisation of a state company, is considered areasonable measure that will help Mobifone lure strategic investors toraise its level of competitiveness.

Last June, Mobifone separatedfrom the State-owned Vietnam Posts and Telecommunications (VNPT) andwas placed under MIC management.

The Ho Chi Minh SecuritiesCorporation (HSC) then valued Mobifone at about 3.4 billion USD andprojected that this may rise to more than 4 billion USD if the company'srevenues and profits continuously increased after its separation fromVNPT.

According to the MIC, VNPT will likely hold 20 percent ofMobifone's registered capital since this is the maximum stake allowedunder the cross-ownership regulation of the 2009 Telecommunication Law.

MobiFoneand rival Vinaphone were once under the VNPT umbrella. Along withViettel, the companies account for more than 90 percent of theVietnamese telecommunications market.

Launched in 1993, Mobifonewas the first telecommunications company to operate in Vietnam.According to the MIC's 2013 ICT White Book, Mobifone was the secondlargest mobile network operator with 21.4 percent of market share,second only to Viettel with 40.5 percent.

Last year, Mobifoneearned 41 trillion VND (1.95 billion USD) in revenues and more than 6trillion VND (285.7 million USD) in profits.-VNA

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