TIRANA, Feb.20- The government has opened up the official procedures for the sale of the remaining 15 percent of shares of former monopoly of fixed line communications, Albtelekom. After the privatization of the company to the Turkish buyer “ȡlik&Turk Telekom” consortium the administration has opened up the way for different actors to buy 15 percent out of the 24 percent of the remaining shares. According to the law on privatizations, the Minister of Economy Genc Ruli has started procedures for the sale of shares on January 14 while the first steps had already been taken during November of last year acknowledging the employees and land owners connected to Albtelekom as primary targets and privileged buyers. The Turkish consortium bought 76 percent of the shares worth $140 million after negotiations that lasted two years including the right to open up and use the third mobile operator “Eagle Mobile”.
Assets and procedures
The Department of Administration and sale of Public property of the Economy ministry has already started the work to complete the privatization packages for the shares of Albtelekom. This department announced that that the founding capital of the company is 15 billion lek while the number of shares is 15.000. Experts have sued foreign consultancy in preparing the process. The primary buyers are targeted to be 2100 employees and the land owners. Competing parties will have to administer 67.000 meter square space of the company’s sites. The employees have already submitted the documentation and by jan.14 have deposited the requests for ownership.
Use of privatization vouchers
The privatization of the shares of Albteelkom has revived the use of long forgotten financial instruments in Albania, the privatization bonds. The bank of Albania stamped in 1995 privatization bonds worth 16 billion lek for the sole purpose of assisting privatization of state owned firms. The black market observations reveal that the value of these bonds decreased sharply from the issuing date onwards but has picked up during the latest transactions related to strategic privatizations of “Albtelekom”, INSIG, ARMO and the distributing unit of KESH.
