Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd has put in an initial bid to buy majority stake in Nigerian Telecommunications Ltd or Nitel and will appoint a consultant to advise on the acquisition.
The state-owned telecom operator has put in an expression of interest for 75 per cent stake in Nitel. "We will appoint a consultant soon to do the due diligence.. We expect the data room of the company (Nitel) to be opened immediately," Anita Soni, MTNL director, finance, told PTI.
A senior MTNL official said the consultant will evaluate the rationale of putting in financial bids for Nitel, which has both fixed-line and mobile operations (both GSM & CDMA).As many as 13 other initial bidders are already in the fray including South African MTN, UAE's Etisalat and Telefonica. The deadline for submitting financial bids is October 2.
Nigeria Bureau of Public Enterprises (BPE) said an evaluation committee has been set up to assess the bids submitted by the 13 companies.
"The consortia that are pre-qualified for the next stage are expected to pay a non-refundable fee of $25,000 for bidding documents and execute the confidentiality and non-disclosure agreement, the Bureau said in a statement.
"It is apt to emphasise that in accordance with the advertisement, interested bidders may choose not to participate in the data room process and are free to submit technical and financial bids by the deadline of October 2, 2009," the BPE added.
Nigeria is Africa's biggest telecom market in terms of investment and subscribers due to its large and fast growing population. The country's continued telecom growth is expected to trigger more intense competition among a growing number of operators.
MTNL is the second telecom operator in Mauritius and is operating in Nepal through a joint venture, UTL. It was keen on Sri Lanka Telecom as well but at the moment, the plan is on the backburner.
