Official: Ppty body to auction govt stake in MTS Belarus in 2011

The Belarusian state property committee plans to put the government’s 51% stake in mobile operator MTS Belarus up for sale at an action in 2011, committee official Anna Korniyevich told reporters Thursday.

“Documents on the sale of a stake have been prepared. They will be submitted to the president for consideration. After a decision is made, an action will be announced,” she said.

Korniyevich also said that not only major Russian mobile operator MTS, which currently holds a 49% stake in MTS Belarus, is interested in the Belarusian government’s stake, but also Chinese companies. She did not specify the names of possible candidates for the stake in MTS Belarus.

In early April, Deputy Prime Minister Anatoly Kalinin said that the Belarusian government planned to put its entire 51% stake in MTS Belarus up for sale open to international bidders, but did not provide a timeline for the sale. The Belarusian government had previously held talks with Russia’s MTS, which is seeking to gain control over the Belarusian operator, but the government and MTS did not agree on a price for a stake in MTS Belarus.

In mid-May, Communications and IT Minister Nikolai Pantelei said the government did not have a plan to immediately sell its stake in MTS Belarus.

If the Belarusian government holds a tender for the controlling stake in MTS Belarus, Russia’s MTS should have pre-emptive rights to buy the stake, because MTS Belarus is a limited liability company, and only if MTS rejects buying the stake at the price set by the government, the stake can be sold at this price to a third party, according to market analysts.

In mid-March, Alexander Lukashenko said the government was ready to sell the controlling stake in MTS Belarus to MTS at U.S. $1 billion, as was reported by Belarusian news agency BelTA. Meanwhile, some analysts estimated the value of a 51% stake in MTS Belarus at about $700 million.

MTS Belarus provided services to 4.8 million subscribers as of late May, MTS said on Monday. MTS’ subscriber base in Russia amounted to 71.4 million users as of the end of May. MTS has subsidiaries in Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Armenia, and Turkmenistan.