Rabat – Chadian President Idriss Deby received Maroc Telecom Group Chairman Abdeslam Ahizoune earlier this week.
Ahizoune went to talk to Deby on February 19 about Maroc Telecom’s probable entry into Chad’s telecommunications market.
Ahizoune told the president that the group is strongly committed to supporting Chad’s digital development. The Chadian leader said that the government was ready to welcome any investor with open arms.
Last year, Chad announced a plan to auction a new telecommunications licenses for mobile services.
In recent years, the Chadian tax on mobile companies gradually increased. The tax rate was 4 percent in 2014, and then went up to 7 percent in 2016. In January 2018, the rate jumped to 9 percent.
If Maroc Telecom enters the Chadian market, the group will have to face two foreign competitors—Luxembourg’s Tigo and India’s Bharti Airtel. But Airtel has said in the past that it might exit the Chadian market.
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Chad would be Maroc Telecom’s 10th African markets. Through its Moov subsidiary, Maroc Telecom operates in Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Gabon, Mali, Côte d’Ivoire, Benin, Togo, Niger, and the Central African Republic.
Except for the Central African Republic, the company’s growing business in each of these countries has yielded positive results.
Maroc Telecom performed well in 2018. Its revenue for the year is expected to be over MAD 36 billion, an increase of 3.1 percent over the previous year.
