Greece to sell biggest ports and top refinery

 
16 October 2012

Beleaguered Greece paved the way for a fresh sell-off of the family silver today as it pledged more privatisations in the coming months to meet the terms of its €130 billion (£104 billion) bailout.

The head of the country’s privatisation agency Yannis Emiris is set to sell a second wave of assets, including its biggest refiner and two largest ports, Piraeus and Thessaloniki, following a first round of six projects due to complete in early 2013.

Emiris told a conference: “We have some very significant assets and tenders to launch in the next few months.”

Under the terms of its plan, Athens is supposed to raise €19 billion by the end of 2015 and €50 billion by 2020 under its asset sales programme. But progress has been sluggish because of the reluctance of Greek governments to sell, political instability and little investor interest due to fears that the country might exit the euro.

Greece has raised only around €1.6 billion since its first bailout in May 2010, although prime minister Antonis Samaras has pledged to revive privatisations.

The first big sales, natural gas firm Depa and a 33% stake in gambling firm Opap, are expected to be completed early next year.

Greece hopes the programme will create around €60 billion in investments, and 50,000 jobs.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Sign up you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy notice .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in