Interfax
October 14

Coscom, an Uzbek-American joint venture that provides mobile phone services in Uzbekistan, has issued 1 billion sum in bonds, said the general director of the International Issuance Syndicate, the organizer of the debt issue.

The issue consists of 10,000 two-year bonds with face value of 100,000 and an annual yield of 29% that will be paid quarterly, Anvar Rasulev told reporters. The bonds were not issued on paper.

Business Bank, Uzbekistan's largest private bank, was the chief underwriter of the issue. This bank and three other private Uzbek banks - Ravnak Bank, Capitalbank and Alp Zhamol Bank - plan to buy the whole bond issue, Rasulev said. A secondary placement of the bonds will take place on the Toshkent exchange.

Coscom plans to use the money raised from the bonds to expand its GSM network. Over the next three years the company plans to expand its existing GSM-900 regional network, and build a GSM-1800 standard and fixed wireless networks, which would increase network capacity to 1 million subscribers and allow the company to cover the whole country.

Coscom's switching capacity now totals 50,000 numbers, and its subscriber base is 36,000. The company holds a license to provide GSM services throughout Uzbekistan until 2016.

Coscom closed 2001 with a new profit of 108.5 million sum, and assets of 16 billion sum.

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