Greece Government To Privatize Public Gas Corporation

Government is planning to start the privatization of Public Gas Corporation S.A. (DEPA) in 2014 to end in 2015, Simos Kedikoglou, spokesperson of government said. Gazprom might bid in the tender again. The first tender ended in the summer 2013 and proved a failure.

„All procedures for getting approvals and formalizing the acquisition of DEPA after the results of the tender are announced may take about a year. The company is already experiencing serious problems with non-payments by consumers, it is heading for restructuring to spin off DESFA, and the bidders were given no guarantees that public regulation of DEPA would not deteriorate. All this creates significant risks that affect the company’s value, while the price of the deal is to be fixed now without taking all these factors into account,“

Kupriyanov said. Valentina Matviyenko, Chairperson of the Federation Council, upper house of Russian parliament, said,

„If the terms being discussed are used as the basis for a new tender to privatize DEPA, Gazprom is ready to participate in it. Gazprom is interested in the DEPA privatization, but the terms proposed were unacceptable and the approval of new terms – the Greek government understood that the changes to be made were fair but ran out of time before they could be formalized.“

Based on additional sources there are still two other companies besides Gazprom to bid on the greek privatisation, the russian Sintez as well the the azerbeidjan gas giant Socar.

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Ihr Oeconomicus