KARACHI: Turkey has shown interest in the bidding for Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited and soon a high-powered Turkish ministry's delegation would visit Pakistan to work on the plan.

Turkey showed the desire in the wake of recently concluded Turkish Prime Minister Tayyab Recep Erdogan's visit to Pakistan. Now the Privatisation Commission (PC) is waiting for their next move, official sources told The News.

"Erdogan and other delegates have expressed such a desire which the government welcomed," an official in the telecom ministry said.

He informed that a Turkish ministry's delegation would be visiting Pakistan soon to finalise the task.

When asked about the next step, he avoided the question by saying, "the PC is the right institution for such questions".

The PC Board has already pre-qualified three potential bidders for the PTCL. The decision was taken at a meeting chaired by Privatisation and Investment Minister, Dr Abdul Hafeez Shaikh, earlier this month.

The pre-qualified parties are: Saudi Oger Limited (SOL), Orascom Telecom (OTH) and Menara Telecom Consortium.

Though the PTCL's monopoly has come to an end as per Pakistan Telecommunication Act 1996, the government has yet to announce a Telecom Policy. At present, the PTCL is the only and state-run incumbent service provider for the provision of land line telecommunications.

The telecom ministry has said time and again that Pakistan has a large telecommunication infrastructure and the government is expecting a minimum investment of $15 billion.

However, the PC observes that it is too early to respond to Turkish desire as three parties have already been pre-qualified.

"The PC would take up this issue in the next board meeting, then we would be in a position to say anything," said an official in the Ministry of Privatisation and Investment. However, he did not rule out the possibility of another bidder's induction.

"It is possible but first of all it has to be decided whether the PC wants more parties or not?" he said.

Established as a public limited company in 1996, PTCL is 88 per cent owned by the government. It has shown impressive growth in the past five years and manages a well-developed domestic telecommunications infrastructure of 4.5 million access lines, nationwide backbone and international communications links. The telecommunications network of the PTCL is almost digital. As a result of tariff re-balancing programme initiated by the government in 1997, the prices of long-distance and international calls have been significantly reduced in recent years.