For immediate release
Ugandan President and MTC Managing Director discuss the way forward
Improved telecommunications, foreign investment strategic to Uganda’s future
Kampala, Uganda, 12 February 2007
Ugandan President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni recently held a comprehensive meeting with MTC Group Managing Director Dr Saad Al Barrak in Kampala discussing a range of issues that covered the liberalization of the telecommunications industry; investment opportunities; incentives for foreign investment and recent free trade agreements that have been recently established in Uganda. President Museveni pointed out that such issues are relevant to the future economic prosperity of Uganda, and in return Dr Barrak provided assurances to the President of the commitment and role that MTC’s fully owned subsidiary Celtel Uganda will play in such an important arena.
Also present in these momentous discussions were the Minister of ICT, Dr Ham-Mukasa Mulira; the Minister of State for Finance, Planning and Economic Development, Professor Semakula Kiwanuka and several MTC Group senior executives.
Notably for MTC Group, in 1995 Celtel Uganda was the first operation launched by Celtel on the African continent, thus the special place it holds among the 13 other operations within Celtel Africa. The operation is a great success story in Uganda and is recognized as the country’s most innovative mobile operator.
President Museveni acknowledged and congratulated Dr Barrak on the milestone establishment of the One Network which raised Uganda’s profile on the telecom world map .In partnership with Celtel Tanzania and Celtel Kenya, Celtel Uganda launched One Network, the first ever borderless mobile network in the world allowing customers to move freely across geographic borders without roaming call surcharges and without having to pay to receive incoming calls.
Throughout the discussions, President Museveni, Minister Mulira and Minister Kiwanuka repeatedly noted that the Uganda government was very determined and is working vigorously to transform Uganda from an agrarian society to a fully fledged member of the growing emerging economies that are transforming to service based and knowledge based economies. Celtel Uganda with the backing of MTC Group will do its utmost in making such a vision become a reality.
ENDS
About MTC
MTC is the pioneer of mobile telecommunications in the Middle East and now a major player on the African continent. We began life in 1983 in Kuwait as the region’s first mobile operator, and since the initiation of our “3x3x3” expansion strategy in 2003, we have expanded rapidly.
As a leading mobile operator in 6 Middle Eastern and 14 sub-Saharan African countries with 12,000 employees, we provide a comprehensive range of mobile voice and data services toover27 million active individual and business customers (as of December 31, 2006).
The company operates in Kuwait and Bahrain as mtc-vodafone, in Jordan as Fastlink, in Iraqas mtc atheer, in Lebanon as mtc touch, in Sudan as Mobitel and in 14 sub-Saharan countries in Africa as Celtel: Burkina Faso, Chad, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Republic of the Congo, Gabon, Kenya, Malawi, Madagascar, Niger, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia.
Listed on the Kuwait Stock Exchange (Code: Tele), MTC’s market capitalization exceeded US$15 billion as of January 31, 2007.For more visit: www.mtctelecom.com
For further information please contact:
Mr Ibrahim Adel
Communications & Investor Relations Director