The Minister for Information Society about the Romtelecom privatization: "The real value is between EUR 300mln and EUR 600mln"

The privatization of the Romanian Post and of Romtelecom are governmental priorities, said Alexandru-Razvan Cotovelea, the Minister for Information Society, during the ZF Mobilio event on April 10.

“By the end of the semester, we will have a very accurate project from the team of consultants, and the president of the privatization committee will come up with an analysis to see what is the best method from the financial and timing point of view. It can be an IPO, a direct negotiation. I tend to believe that if the figures, the strategy of the consultants, pay off for the government, then direct negotiation is the best,” said Cotovelea, quoted by Ziarul Financiar.

The minister also added: “The real value is between EUR 300 million and EUR 600 million and the negotiation will be very tough, because we believe this operator has an extraordinary market potential. Only if we take into account the investments that are under way and those that come up next, it offers an extraordinary infrastructure for new types of services. Quantifying this potential, we must ask for a fair price, given that Romtelecom is one of the first three players on the local market and it could be an important regional player.”

The Romanian state has a minority 46 percent stake in Romtelecom. The majority stake in the operator is owned by Greek Group OTE and Deutsche Telekom which owns a 40 percent stake in OTE.

Previously, the minister told the media that he does not exclude the option of selling the shares to Deutsche Telekom. “We don’t have anything against DT buying our shares. It is one of the world leaders in the field and, as long as it plans to invest seriously and doesn’t limit itself to short-term business plans, selling off would be an objective for us”, said the minister.”