MTN is facing increasing pressure from the Ugandan regulator to list its local subsidiary on the Kampala Stock Exchange.
This is the question that is agitating the landerneau of Ugandan financial operators: will MTN Uganda be, yes or no, soon to be listed on the Kampala Stock Exchange? The speculation that surrounds the Ugandan subsidiary of the South African operator MTN follows a recent article in the Bloomberg financial news site, published at the end of August, which claims that the company was put under pressure to join the rating. from Kampala.
MTN Uganda, which is due to renew its license by October, would have been invited by the executive director of the country’s telecommunications regulator, Godfrey Mutabazi, to ensure that all “[…] Ugandans are part of society”. A “suggestion” which, as many observers remind us, echoes earlier statements made in June by Finance Minister Matia Kasaija. Present at the 8th National Forum for Competitiveness, the Ugandan financier told the participants that his ministry would submit a memorandum to the Council of Ministers demanding an IPO of all telecom operators in the country (MTN, Airtel and Africell).
Speaking yesterday for the first time on these allegations, in the columns of our colleague of the Daily Monitor, the management of MTN Uganda for its part denied the existence of “[…] any pressure to be listed on the stock market” Its spokesman, Val Okecho, said he had “received no formal or informal communication from the regulator demanding that the company’s IPO be a condition precedent to the renewal of its license.” However, a source close to MTN, quoted in the same article, recalls on condition of anonymity that “the company is aware that different suggestions will be made during the process [of renewal of the license]”.
The operation, if it were realized, would in any case MTN Uganda the nineteenth company to integrate the Kampala Stock Exchange. MTN Uganda, a subsidiary of the MTN group (Africa’s largest operator with 221 million subscribers), had close to 10.9 million customers at the end of March, for a market share of around 55%.
