KARACHI, April 17: The Mobilink has announced to invest $700 million in the next two years to expand its operations in the country to meet the demand for phenomenal growth in the telecom sector.

The company signed agreements with banks on Tuesday to arrange funding for its future plans.

President and CEO of the company, Zouhair A. Khaliq, said that the Mobilink has already invested more than $2 billion on its mobile network and is planning to invest an additional $700 million.

Zouhair was speaking on the occasion of financial close of Rs7.5 billion term financing package through two local bank syndicated transactions.

Out of this total, Rs4 billion medium-term financing facility has exclusively been arranged by the MCB Bank through participation from more than 14 financial institutions.

The remaining Rs3.5 billion syndication has been jointly arranged by the MCB, in collaboration with the HBL, UBL, ABL, HSBC and NIB.

Telecommunications is one of the few sectors which attracted huge investment in the last four years and the tremendous growth potential led to invite more foreign companies which accelerated competition in the sector.

The competition proved fruitful for customers as rates of mobile phone services declined substantially.

Zouhair said that Mobilink has the largest mobile network in the country, covering 55 per cent of the total population and 95 per cent of the urban population in over 5,000 cities, towns and villages.

Experts said after the entry of China Mobile, more competition is expected. China Mobile has recently moved to buy Paktel Company having a value of $460 million to make it a platform to enter this highly attractive sector.

Zouhair said, Mobilink’s subscriber base has grown five times in the last two-and-a-half years. He said the proceeds from these transactions would be used by the company to refinance its ongoing CAPEX plan through more cost-effective funding sources.

President MCB Bank Mohammad Aftab Manzoor said that successful financial close, with the participation of more than 18 financial institutions, will go a long way in strengthening our position as a leading investment bank in the market.

Mobilink is one of our premier clients, and MCB has been involved in a leading role in almost all their capital raising transactions in the local market, he said.