Bulgaria Set to Privatize Tobacco Monopoly, Major Military Plant

Source from:  Novinite.com 04/12/2010

Bulgaria's Privatization Agency hopes to complete the sale of state-owned cigarette monopoly Bulgartabac in 2010. This has been announced by the head of the Privatization Agency, Todor Nikolov, who explained that the privatization procedure for Bulgartabac had reached a phase in which the state is preparing its sale together with the consultant it picked in February, Citygroup Global Markets Ltd, as cited by the Pari Daily. Two of the less profitable plants of Bulgartabac holding - in the cities of Plovdiv and Stara Zagora - were sold in 2009 through the Sofia Stock Exchange; the holding still owns the two larger and more consolidated factories in Sofia and Blagoevgrad as well as a number of commercial brands. Nikolov also announced that in 2010 the Bulgarian state planned to initiate the privatization of the sizable but troubled military producer VMZ Sopot. In his words, the struggling arms giant will take a while to be privatized because the respective strategy for the it had to be approved by the Parliament first. The head of the Privatization Agency has pointed out that the plans of the Borisov government to privatize state-owned minority shares in some 55 companies are very important because these deals could bring a lot of revenue to the depleted state budget. "It is much harder to make profitable privatization deals under the current crisis conditions but this does not mean that the Bulgarian state should not exert its efforts," Nikolov is quoted as saying. The sale of state-owned minority shares is one of the major anti-crisis measures adopted by the Borisov cabinet recently in an attempt to raise more state revenue. Enditem