The South African government invited consultancies on Friday to bid to provide domestic public relations services for the initial public offering (IPO) of phone utility Telkom.
In a large advertisement in local newspapers the Department of Public Enterprises said bids must be in within a week, and the winning bidder would be retained for up to seven months from September 16.
This gives a clear indication that the government plans to have completed the long-delayed IPO as scheduled by the end of the fiscal year to end-March.
Eugene Mokeyane, head of the IPO office at the department, said previous PR contracts locally and abroad had expired in December after the listing was postponed partly because of delays in drafting a new telecoms policy and new regulations.
Mokeyane said the department was now working to ”fast-track” the process.
The government, which says the IPO will be a ”landmark transaction”, plans to list at least 20% in Johannesburg and New York. In its annual budget last February it said it planned to raise about R10-billion from the privatisation.
Since then, treasury officials have said they will go ahead with the IPO despite weak world telecoms markets.
SBC of the United States and Telekom Malaysia already own 30% of the state-controlled utility. – Reuters