Telenor leaving Pakistan due to significant business challenges, says CEO Brekke

ISLAMABAD: Many foreign companies including telecommunication giants, are preparing to leave the Pakistani market. A foreign mobile phone company, Telenor operating from Pakistan also decided to fly away after the business challenges being faced in the country.

During an interview, CEO Telenor Sigve Brekke explained the reasons for leaving Pakistan. He added that the business environment faces significant challenges and this is one of the reasons for the company’s decision to exit the Pakistani market.

In a recent interview, Brekke highlighted the difficulty of repatriating profits as a key factor influencing investors’ decisions to leave the country. However, he compared this to Telenor’s situation in Bangladesh, where the company continues to successfully return to profitability. Over the past two decades, Telenor has invested in Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, and Myanmar.

However, Telenor has merged its business in India with Airtel for several reasons and sold its Myanmar unit after the military junta took over in 2021. The tech company also merged its businesses in Thailand and Malaysia.

In December 2023, Telenor announced to sale of its operations in Pakistan to Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL). In contrast, Telenor’s CEO said the company has no plans to withdraw from Bangladesh or merge its Bangladesh unit. He said that speculations about the Grameenphone merger or Telenor exiting Bangladesh are wrong.

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“It’s very difficult to do business in Pakistan at the moment. That’s one of the reasons we’ve decided to get out,. If an investor cannot return profits from a country, the investor will probably leave over time. But that is not the case for us in Bangladesh. We are taking profits,” Brekke said in an interview.

“The reason we exited some markets and merged into some markets is because we saw that we needed to be prepared for data growth in those markets. And we saw that we couldn’t, Basically not enough business for more than three operators this was the time when people were queuing up to get their first mobile phone,” he said.

Furthermore, he added, “Then it was quite a growth for more than three players. But now that people have mobile phones, then you need to be able to provide a variety of services. And that’s why we have Malaysia and Thailand.”

Telenor Pakistan has been announced to be acquired by PTCL and all the regulatory procedures are being completed in this regard after which Telenor and Ufone Pakistan will be formally integrated.