After months of intense negotiations, Fiji Television has finally sold its Papua New Guinea operations, Media Niugini Limited to Telekom PNG Limited.
Since last year, Fiji TV’s parent company Fijian Holdings Limited had been on the lookout for potential partners for MNL.
In October last year Telekom PNG made a substantive offer.
Further negotiations led to a price of $20 million kina which is about $16.6 million Fijian.
Late last year, Telekom PNG paid a mandatory deposit of around $2 million kina.
Fiji TV had bought MNL in 2004.
“Initially we did $27 million. A major component of our income is largely from rugby league which is the most popular game so when MNL lost that one definitely the value has to go down. We made public announcement why it failed. So we have to be reasonable in reducing our value. So its a mutual discussion continued for a few weeks and finally we agreed this is the price and we are happy they have come forward and to take this offer,” said FHL’s Group CEO, Nouzab Fareed.
Today also marks a new era for PNG’s television and communications sector.
“EMTV is a good business. People in PNG are very excited. People of PNG are excited that the business is now owned by themselves through the state owned company of Telekom and of course for Telekom we have a large infrastructure across the country that we really want to use to leverage the transition from analogue service to digital service,” highlighted Michael Donnelly, the Chief Executive Officer for Telekom PNG Limited.