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DEI plans to sell plants

The Public Power Corporation (DEI), the country's biggest electricity producer, will start selling power stations this year to help meet the terms of the country's international bailout and hopes to raise at least half a billion euros in the process

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26 Apr 2012

The Public Power Corporation (DEI), the country's biggest electricity producer, will start selling power stations this year to help meet the terms of the country's international bailout and hopes to raise at least half a billion euros in the process, its chief executive said on Tuesday.

"The idea is to have this privatisation process completed by the end of 2013," DEI chief executive Arthouros Zervos said, on the sidelines of a wind energy conference in Denmark.

Zervos said the company would initially sell four power plants and expected to raise more than half a billion euros.

Only after the sale of the power stations would the state reduce its holding as required under terms of the bailout for heavily indebted Greece.

The government is required to cut its stake in the loss-making company from 51 to 34 percent.

Zervos said the company did not want to sell shares now because the amount raised would be too small given its market capitalisation of around 715m euros.

DEI posted a record loss of 240m euros for the last quarter of 2011. Its shares are down around 20 percent this year compared to a rise of more than five percent in the benchmark Athens index.

Zervos said the power stations being sold were fuelled by lignite – a form of soft brown coal that accounts for about half of the country's electricity production. He did not give the generating capacity of the stations that will be offered.

The European Commission has been pushing Greece for years to lift DEI's monopoly on production of power from lignite.

Zervos said discussion had begun on selling hydroelectric power stations but no decision had been taken on that yet. (Reuters)

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