ATHENS – Reneging on promises to halt privatizations, Prime Minister and Radical Left SYRIZA leader Alexis Tsipras push to accelerate the sale of state enterprises has now seen one of the plums, Hellenic Petroleum, lure five bidders.
The privatizations authority, which has seen repeated changes at its helm, said there was keen interest in the country’s largest oil refiner with Greece and Paneuropean Oil and Industrial Holding jointly selling a stake of at least 50.1 percent.
Initial interest was submitted by: Alrai Group Holdings Limited, a consortium comprising Carbon Asset Management DWC-LLC and Alshaheen Group, Gupta Family Group Alliance, Glencore Energy UK and Vitol Holding B.V.
The government has opened the doors for the sale of highways, ports, airports, utility companies and just about everything it owns after Tsipras, before winning elections in January, 2015, said he would stop what he called the fire sale of state assets at bargain basement prices.
Greece received just 4.7 billion euros ($5.5 billion) in cash from 38 completed transactions from 2011 through 2017 with the submitted binding bids amounting to 7.7 billion euros ($8.98 billion) Kathimerini said earlier.
It is aiming for 2.7 billion euros ($3.16 billion) in 2018 but the combined totals over the last eight years have fallen woefully short of initial estimates by the country’s creditors, who demanded the sales, that they could fetch as much as 50 billion euros ($58.54 billion) before successive governments began dragging their heels on the sell-offs.
Read more at thenationalherald.com
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