Turkey Sees Jan 25 Deadline for Tekel Tobacco Bids

Source from:  malaysia.news.yahoo.com Reuters - Friday, October 26ANKARA, Oct 25 10/26/2007

The deadline for bids in the sale of Turkish state tobacco firm Tekel Cigarette will be January 25, Privatisation Adminstration officials told Reuters on Thursday. The privatisation body said last week that Turkey planned to start the sale tender process by the end of October in what is the latest in several planned attempts to sell the tobacco firm. Tekel has six cigarette factories to sell in addition to its popular cigarette brand names such as Tekel 2000, Tekel 2001. "For Tekel Cigarette, we have decided January 25 as the final bidding date," one official said. Turkey most recently in April postponed a plan to sell the former monopoly, which has a 40 percent share of the domestic market, with annual sales of around $8 billion. Its share has fallen from 60 percent since 2001 when Ankara first said it planned to sell the company. The sale is part of a broad privatisation programme backed by the International Monetary Fund. Earlier this year the government raised a special consumption tax on tobacco, which some in the government opposed because of the possible impact on the Tekel selloff. In 2003, Japan Tobacco offered $1.15 billion for Tekel but Ankara cancelled the tender, saying bids were unsatisfactory. There were no bids in a 2004 tender. Enditem