DHAKA: Indian telecom giant Bharti Airtel is seeking to buy Bangladesh’s fourth-largest mobile phone operator Warid from its Abu Dhabi-based owners, regulators have said.

The Dhabi Group, which fully owns Warid Telecom, has sought approval from the Bangladesh Telecommunications Regulatory Commission for the sale of a 70 per

cent stake in the company, Commission chairman Zia Ahmed said.

The purchase of the stake would make Bharti the latest foreign company to make inroads into the fast-growing Bangladesh mobile market.

“The Dhabi Group informed us on Sunday that it would sell 70 per cent of Warid Telecom shares to Bharti Airtel Ltd. We have sought more papers and the copy of the memorandum of understanding between the two companies,” Ahmed said.

Bharti said later it was looking at potential purchases in the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) region, including Bangladesh, but declined comment on whether it wanted to purchase Warid.

“We have always said we are interested in the SAARC region,” Bharti Enterprises Deputy Group chief executive Akhil Gupta told reporters in New Delhi. “We have been interested in Bangladesh,” he added.

The SAARC region is made up of Bangladesh, Bhutan, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka and Afghanistan.

But Gupta would not comment on the regulator’s statement that Bharti was seeking approval to buy 70 per cent of Warid. “I can’t talk about that unless something official happens,” Gupta said.

The reported move by Bharti comes after its plan to ally with South Africa’s MTN to create an emerging market telecom giant collapsed in September when Pretoria said it feared MTN might lose its “national character” in the merger.

Analysts say Bharti, which has over 100 million subscribers in India, will need to expand abroad to increase revenues with earnings growth slowing in its home market which has become crowded by new players.

Ahmed said the company did not mention how much the stake was valued at but added that Bharti had initially intended to invest $300 million. “I am sure the new investment will inject new momentum into our telecoms sector,” he said.

An official from the company told local English-language newspaper The Daily Star that the deal would be worth $900 million.

Launched in May 2007, Warid has nearly three million subscribers — out of nearly 52 million overall — at the end of October.

As the industry expands in Bangladesh, experts predict the number of mobile customers will pass the 100-million mark by 2015, fuelled by a price war among the country’s six operators. In 2004, Egyptian Orascom took over Sheba and Singapore’s state-owned Singtel bought a 45 per cent stake in Bangladesh Telecom in 2005. Last year Japan’s NTT DoCoMo Inc paid $350 million to buy a 30 per cent stake in operator AKTEL, majority owned by Axiata of Malaysia.