Algeria will take three to six months to decide on a valuation of Egyptian group Orascom Telecom’s local unit Djezzy, which it wants to buy, Egyptian financial daily Al-Mal reported an Algerian minister as saying.
Algeria has hit Djezzy with hundreds of millions of dollars in back taxes and barred it from moving profit abroad. It also stopped Orascom selling the unit to South African group MTN.
Orascom Telecom has agreed to talks on a nationalization of Djezzy and Algeria this month and Algeria provisionally appointed law firm Shearman & Sterling to advise it.
"Algerian trade minister Mustapha Benbada said … the duration of the evaluation that the Algerian government is carrying out for the unit will be three to six months," Al-Mal reported on Wednesday.
It said Benbada told an Al-Mal reporter he had set the end of 2011 as a deadline for an agreement with Orascom on Djezzy.
Benbada said there would be no abuse or injustice by Algeria in its assessment of Djezzy and the government would end the dispute amicably, Al-Mal said.
Djezzy has been Orascom Telecom’s biggest single source of revenue, and uncertainty over its future is an added complication in a planned deal worth more than $6 billion for Russian operator Vimpelcom to acquire Orascom Telecom assets.
The Egyptian mobile company’s chairman, Naguib Sawiris, said on Tuesday it saw international arbitration as the only option for resolving the dispute because of a lack of response from Algiers.
