Telefonica speeds up Argentine investment

30 January 2004

MADRID – Spain’s telecom giant Telefonica is to speed up “in an important way” a EUR 566 million (USD 700m) investment project in Argentina that was originally scheduled to take place over the next three years, officials said Friday.

After meeting in Madrid with Argentine President Nestor Kirchner, company president Cesar Alierta said “the prospects that we have now in Argentina are even bigger than just six months ago,” when the Spanish firm first announced the project.

Alierta said that after watching Argentina’s economic recovery take hold in recent months, Telefonica has decided “not only to keep the commitments announced in November, but to accelerate them,” adding that this is exactly what he told Kirchner during their meeting.

Telefonica currently has 6 million clients in Argentina, 1.8 million of whom have cell phones and 4.2 million who have land lines with the company.

Just as Alierta himself said in Buenos Aires last November, Telefonica intends to take advantage of the new investments to secure a total of 10 million clients in the country of 33 million people.

[Copyright EFE with Expatica]

Subject: Spanish news