Parliament to scrutinize government’s acquisition of AirtelTigo
Government, through the Finance Ministry and the Communications Ministry, has been directed by the Speaker of Parliament, Alban Bagbin, to put before the House for scrutiny, the agreement for the acquisition of AirtelTigo.
Government last year acquired 100 per cent stake in the company by completing the ownership takeover of AirtelTigo in November 2021, operators of the network Bharti Airtel disclosed in a regulatory filing to the Bombay Stock Exchange.
“This is in further to our announcement dated October 27, 2020, and April 16, 2021, regarding Government of Ghana’s takeover of ownership of Airtel/Tigo Joint Venture. We wish to update that the transaction has been completed and 100% shares of Airtel Tigo have been transferred to the Government of Ghana,” Bharti Airtel said.
In April this year, the government of Ghana signed an agreement for the transfer of ownership of telecommunications company AirtelTigo, a joint venture between Bharti Airtel and telecom operator Millicom International Cellular SA (Tigo), which jointly operates in the country.
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Mrs Owusu-Ekuful signed on behalf of the government of Ghana, while Ms. Jatina Catharina Uneken-van de Vreede, Mr. Martin P Frechette, Mr. Timothy Pennington, Mr. Eric Nana Nipah and Mr. Vish Ashiagbor signed on behalf of the seller entities.
Despite the completion of the deal and the ownership takeover by government, Minister for Communications and Digitalisation Ursula Owusu-Ekufful, answering questions about the deal in Parliament on Tuesday, said the agreement is awaiting the input of the Attorney General before finalization.
“We are still in the closing obligation stage of this transaction and so all the legal, constitutional processes will be completed on the advice of the Attorney General by the end of this meeting,” she said.
But reacting to the development after Mrs Owusu-Ekuful’s answers in Parliament on Tuesday February 15, the Speaker, Mr Bagbin said, “Entities that enter into agreement with government, we deal with government and so when you enter into those agreements with private sector or whatever we will depend on your communication and the document that you will attach to the communication as the authentic documents for our attention, I know why I am saying this.
“And so Ministry of Finance, kindly take note we have given you a number if pointers to write officially to us attaching agreements that the Minister has entered into with various agencies for us to work on.
“As at today, after one year it as not been done. We cannot depend on documents from those agencies as authentic documents to work with.
“This is a notice to Ministry of Finance , personally I have called the Ministry a number of times and we are not getting the necessary responses from them. Please take this thing seriously the judgement judgements are becoming too many for the country, I will not want to be part of it. I will not work on any document that is not originating from government source.”
