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"The tender for the privatisation of a majority stake in natural gas distributor Baskent Dogalgaz is to go ahead in June or July according to an announcement made by the Minister of Finance, Mehmet Simsek, and will account for the sale of 80% of the company's shares. Simsek expects the privatisation of the grid to be completed by the end of 2011 and has already given the Privatisation Administration the necessary instructions.
Baskent has already attracted a huge amount of attention, even though an earlier tender on May 10 had to be cancelled due to the buyer's failure to make a $1.21 billion payment. It was to have been sold to MMEKA machinery who had also agreed to purchase electricity distribution companies on both the Asian and European sides of Istanbul in a deal worth $6 billion.
However the company later had financial problems which were mainly due to the two business partners of the company, Mehmet Karamehmet and Mehmet Kazanci falling out with each other. The current deadline for MMEKA to make a $5 billion payment for the two electricity grids is May 31st, but it's largely expected that they will fail to do so as according to media reports the two are still not on speaking terms.
Turkey has been concentrating on privatising the 18 state-owned electricity distribution companies and to date nine have already been transferred to private ownership. The expected revenue when all transfers are completed is estimated to be $10 billion.
On another note an official agreement on the Nabucco gas transit pipeline in Turkey is due to be signed on June 6, by Turkish company BOTAS, Transgaz from Romania, Mol Natural Gas from Hungary, RWE from Germany, Bulgargaz from Bulgaria and OMV from Austria.
