Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited, Telecom Consultants of India and Tata Communications are planning to offload their stake in Nepal-based telecom service provider ? United Telecom. TCIL has reportedly already reduced its stake from 26 per cent to 21 per cent in the company and has stated that the other two partners are also witnessing an equal proportion of disinvestment.
According to the JV partners, United Telecom is not performing well and at the same time needs to meet operational expenditure such as the license fees. The stake sale by Indian investors will allow local stakeholders, including existing partner Nepal Ventures Private Limited to increase its stake in the company and encourage new partners to raise fresh equity into United Telecom. MTNL, in 2014, had approached the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) to allow it to sell stake in Nepal’s United Telecom and showed its reluctance to infuse any fresh capital.
