Minister of Communications Limor Livnat announced today that she would oppose any postponement of the process cancelling Bezeq’s monopoly of the inland telephone calls market and the opening up of competition, planned to currently start. Livnat made the announcement at the end of the Knesset Finance Committee discussion of the cancellation of the monopoly proposed in the Arrangements Bill discussed by the Committee today.
Livnat was replying to a proposal by MK Avi Yehezkel (Labor) that privatization of inland telephone calls be postponed to the year 2000. Livnat told the Committee that the process itself was likely to take years, and it was therefore important that it started today.
The Committee made no decision, since voting on all the clauses of the Arrangements Bill will take place next Sunday. However, Committee chairman MK Avraham Ravitz decided another meeting on the subject would take place tomorrow, in a shortened forum comprising Bezeq general manager, Ministry of Communications director-general, and Bezeq works committee chairman.
The discussion of the monopoly’s cancellation turned into electioneering, encouraged by the Labor party Committee representatives. Scores of employees, some of them from Yehezkel’s home turf, "organized" a presence in the room and nearby corridor of where the meeting took place. Histadrut chairman MK Amir Peretz who is planning to run for election to the Knesset as head of a new workers’ party, also attended the meeting, although he is not a Committee member.
Bezeq works committee chairman Shlomo Kfir proposed separating the inland telephone calls privatization proposal from the Arrangements Bill, and in the meantime to negotiate with employees liable to be harmed by the privatization process. Prime Minister’s Office director-general Moshe Leon promised the workers to hold talks on the distribution of privatization revenues after 14% of Bezeq shares are issued in April 1999. This would reduce the government’s holdings in Bezeq to 40%. Leon emphasized that cancellation of the monopoly of inland telephone calls is part of the conditions of the offering, and distribution of revenues would take place only taking the company’s financial soundness into consideration.
Published by Israel's Business Arena January 10, 1999