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Amman: Lebanon postponed the auction of the country's two mobile-phone companies by three months because of a political stalemate over the election of a new president, said Marwan Hamadeh, minister of telecommunications.
"We had committed ourselves to this February, but we will not take a decision before a new president and a new government takes over," Hamadeh said in an interview from Beirut yesterday.
The ruling coalition has agreed to a delay of three months.
The government, which will retain a third of the shares in the two companies, MTC Touch and Alfa, hopes to raise more than $7 billion from the sale to repay debt. Revenue from telecommunications accounts for about 40 per cent of the state's income, Hamadeh said.
Huge debt
Lebanon has debts of more than $41 billion following the reconstruction of the country after the 1975-1990 civil war and last year's conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in the south of the country, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit.
That represented 190 per cent of gross domestic product at the end of last year.
"We need a good climate to attract investors'' before auctioning the companies, Hamadeh said. "The Lebanese market potential is huge. We have a small penetration rate for a big market.''
Lebanon has been without a head of state since November 23, when Syrian-backed Emile Lahoud left office at the end of his term.
The delay to the sale was reported by the Daily Star newspaper yesterday.
Saudi Telecom, Emirates Telecom, Qatar Telecom, Zain, the Kuwaiti telecom operator formerly known as Mobile Telecommunications, Bahrain Telecom, Orascom Telecom Holding, have all expressed an interest, Hamadeh said. There is also a French-German company, which Hamadeh declined to identify.
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