Early this month the MTN Group Ltd. and its bankers provided more documents in a bid to reduce Nigeria’s Central Bank $8.1 billion claim on the South African telco.
Latest developments revealed by Nigeria’s Information Minister, Lai Mohammed now asserts that the Nigerian Central Bank and South African telecommunications firm MTN could soon strike a deal in their dispute over the repatriation of $8.1 billion.
Nigeria, which accounts for a third of the South African company’s annual core profit, is MTN’s biggest market.
“I am sure there will be a settlement and I believe they are getting closer to resolving it,” Information Minister Lai Mohammed reiterated.
“They are ‘businessmen’ and they are going to resolve it… it is in the interest of all the parties that this matter will be resolved,” he said, declining to give any further details.
MTN’s shares have lost a fifth of their value since the Nigerian central bank ordered the firm and the four banks involved – Standard Chartered PLC, Stanbic IBTC Bank PLC Citibank and Diamond Bank PLC – to bring back the funds on Aug. 29.
Governor Godwin Emefiele said earlier this month that the central bank may reduce the amount.
