Bharti to mitigate debt from $10.7 billion Zain acquisition in next few years: Sunil Mittal

Telecom czar Sunil Mittal, who completed the $10.7-billion acquisition of Zain Africa last week, is known to be debt averse and though his company raised $9 billion in debt for the acquisition, Mittal says he is not going to keep servicing the debt for too long.

Mittal who spoke to Indian Express editor-in-chief Shekhar Gupta on NDTV 24x7's Walk the Talk show, said he plans to reduce the debt over the next few years either through internal accruals or through a stake sale in his tower company or the parent company.

He said Bharti would not keep the debt for too long as he did not like to have too much debt. He added that the company has plans to mitigate this and the debts would come down over the next few years.

He said that whether it came down through the process of internal accruals or equity sale in the tower company or in the main company- these decisions would be taken over a period of time.

Mittal is upbeat about telecom prospects in Africa where average tariffs are 20 cents a minute and is disappointed at the state of regulatory affairs in India.
He said that in the garb of promoting greater competition the company had been pushed to the wall which has been very hard on it.

Mittal's comments came in the context of the recent TRAI's recommendations on 2G spectrum pricing, which came in the wake of the government doling out licences to eight new telecom operators which has led to overcrowding in the market, spectrum scarcity which has driven up prices as was in evidence during the recent 3G-wireless broadband auctions.