Telenor seeks continued cooperation

In conjunction with Muhammad Yunus' ongoing visit to Norway, he has once again made accusations against Telenor. Yunus' companies and organisations have a 38% stake in Grameenphone. Telenor owns the remaining 62%.

- Muhammad Yunus is a highly influential person in Bangladesh with extensive knowledge of the business sector in the country. Rather than attacking Telenor, we have urged Yunus to cooperate with us to address the unacceptable conditions as quickly as possible, says Jon Fredik Baksaas in Telenor.

Child labour is an extensive problem in Bangladesh. According to Unicef, there are approximately 13 million child labourers in the country. The government does not itself have a sufficient monitoring system in order to control the problem. According to the Bangladeshi newspaper The Daily Star, the government has a mere 13 inspectors to inspect over 14,000 factories across Bangladesh. Accordingly, large companies operating in Bangladesh need to behave particularly cautiously to combat these unacceptable conditions. Both Grameenphone and Telenor take this responsibility very seriously.

-We all have a responsibility to address child labour and hazardous working conditions in Bangladesh, be it as a local government, Telenor, or Muhammad Yunus. Nobody can define themselves as exempt from this responsibility. In this context it is irrelevant whether you own 62% or 38% of a company. This responsibility starts by demonstrating a cooperative attitude, says Jon Fredik Baksaas.

As previously communicated, the management and Board of Grameenphone were informed of the progress with the ongoing improvement initiatives at suppliers to the company. Both the representatives from Grameen Telecom (where Yunus is Chairman of the Board) expressed satisfaction with the information given and the progress reported.

Regarding the meeting in Oslo on 5th September 2008
Telenor has in the past three weeks initiated two meetings in Dhaka with Yunus and it was our impression that we had established a positive and constructive dialogue. Consequently, we had positive expectations ahead of the meeting in Oslo yesterday. When we concluded the meeting it was our impression that it had been a constructive meeting and we were looking forward to continuing an even closer cooperation in the future. Consequently, we were very surprised to learn of the content of the press release that Yunus issued later that evening. In Telenor's opinion, it would have been reasonable to expect Professor Yunus to mention these accusations during our meeting earlier that day, particularly as the release of this statement had apparently already been planned prior to our meeting.

Regarding the ownership conflict
In the conflict regarding the ownership of Grameenphone, Telenor disagrees with Muhammad Yunus that we have an agreement to sell our stake in the company to him. We would like to emphasise that the shareholder agreement clearly states that any disagreements should be resolved through the Swedish courts.

Regarding the VoIP issue
As communicated to Yunus yesterday, Telenor are in complete agreement with him that the circumstances surrounding the VoIP issue need further investigation, particularly to uncover the persons responsible. Further, Telenor stresses that this is an issue which Grameenphone must respond to and that this process includes both shareholders.

For more information about Telenor's follow-up to the unacceptable working conditions in Bangladesh, see www.telenor.com/working-conditions-in-Bangladesh/

Contacts:

Vice President Pål Kvalheim, tel. +47970 44970

Head of Information Scott Engebrigtsen, tel. +47900 43484