FE Report
DSE President Shakil Rizvi has said the country's second largest telecom company Banglalink may go public if the upcoming budget favours the telecom sector.
The DSE president said this Sunday after a meeting with the Banglalink's chief executive officer (CEO) Ahmed Abou Doma.
Mr Rizvi, however, said the CEO was not the only person of the company to take the decision. That's why there was scope for more discussion regarding the offloading of the company's shares in the capital market.
"We discussed the present condition of the country's capital market as well as the prospect of Banglalink," he said.
Mr Rizvi said, "The CEO said his company may go public if the government lessens the Sims-tax and the corporate tax of the telecom companies in the upcoming budget."
When asked, the Banglalink CEO was, however, unwilling to say anything about the time for the company to go public.
Banglalink is the second largest cellular service provider in Bangladesh after Grameenphone. As of November 2009, Banglalink had a subscriber base of 12.99 million. In April 2010, the number of Banglalink subscribers stood at 14.94 million. It is a subsidiary wholly-owned by Orascom Telecom.
Banglalink had 1.03 million connections until December 2005. The number of Banglalink users increased by 257 per cent and stood at 3.64 million at the end of 2006, making it the fastest growing operator in the world for that year. In August 2006, Banglalink became the first company to provide free incoming calls from BTTB for both post-paid and pre-paid connections. On August 20, 2008, Banglalink got past the landmark of 10 million subscriber base.
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