Al-Ahram Weekly | Economy

		Al-Ahram Weekly 3 - 9 June 1999 Issue No. 432
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875

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MobiNil apologises
MOBINIL cellular phone network surprised its subscribers when it announced that it would give them a one-month free subscription. Card holders will also receive an additional LE50 worth of calls without charge. It is an attempt by the company to apologise to its customers for the bad connections during May. This move is expected to cost the company some LE33 million.
Company officials attribute the congestion of lines to the fact that demand has been growing faster than the infrastructure. They promised that service would improve as the company is in the process of installing a third switch and expanding existing switches to comfortably accommodate 600,000 users by the end of the year.
Users as well as members of parliament have attacked the company for poor service. A question was tabled by Zakaria Azmi, MP, to parliament about the deteriorating service of mobile phone companies in Egypt.

Omar Effendi to go private
AFTER THREE years of hesitation, the government this week unveiled a plan to sell a number of public sector internal trade companies. Gamal Essam El-Din reports.
The Cabinet Privatisation Committee (CPC) decided to transfer five internal trade companies from public to private hands. This is the first time such companies will be privatised. The sale could raise more than LE1.5 billion. The list includes Omar Effendi shops, Clothes and Consumer Products Company (Sednaoui), Hanneaux Stores, Modern Couture (Benzion, Ades and Rivoli) and the Egyptian Products Company.
Minister of Public Enterprise Atef Ebeid said the government is keen on keeping some of the shares of these companies. "The two holding companies (the Spinning and Weaving Company and Trade and Textiles Company) stipulated that 76 per cent of the shares of each of the five companies be privatised on the stock market. They want to hold 24 per cent of the shares in their hands to ensure that the production of their other affiliated companies be displayed in the branches," Ebeid said.
Sixty Egyptian and international business consortia have submitted offers to buy all of the companies, Ebeid said. The government has decided to set aside LE170 million out of the privatisation proceeds to fund an early retirement programme for redundant labour in these companies, the minister added.
The decision to privatise the five state-owned internal trade companies did not come as a surprise. It had been delayed many times due to the long procedures needed to review the documents concerning ownership and leasing rights for the branches.



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