Sale of Telekom was never the subject in government conversations, i.e. mayor owner of company, in last several months of my service as Acting Director in Telekom, said Predrag Culibrk, adding that the only currently actual subject is how to increase company value and improve business in sharper and sharper relations with competition.
Company value increase is the main subject for Serbian Government representatives as mayor owner and leadership of the company at the moment, said GM, adding that his attitude is that state-owned company can successfully fight with competition and that privatization is not necessary for long-term stay.
This company showed 90% profit fall under state’s leadership in the first six months last year, writes Politika. Government doesn’t declares officially about business results and plans for Telekom, but Mladjan Dinkic, Minister of Finance and Industry hadn’t concealed before that he would sell the company if accomplished price is 2,5 billion Euros.
Dinkic declared in government once that Telekom’s profit decrease of 90% should be investigated. While liberal economists see confirmation of their attitude in those results that state can’t be a good boss and Telekom should get private owner, others believe that it shouldn’t be sold and put on the stock at the moment because it will worth less for sure.
It will be honest to say that Telekom is still on a positive note. The truth is that positive note is drastically smaller that before, but positive is positive. Culibrk said that they finished with hardly 1,5billion dinars profit with certain financial components’ fall, first half of year.
That brought us to situation in September, when I became the leader of the company that we had to see if there is some space for improving until the end of the year. Telekom is huge system that has its own big inertia and great results cannot be expected in a short period, but after a year or two it can be, said Culibrk for “Mondo”.
It is important to stress that real challenges for Telekom are yet to come. Payout of credits used for 20% of Greek OTE ownership begins this month and total debt amounts around 470billion Euros.
Besides, competition is sharper and sharper. SBB launched fixed telephony, and Telenor accomplished bigger income than MTS, which is a part of Telekom, in 2011. We are still waiting for 2012 results.
Source Serbia-Business.com
