Ministries agree on energy sector privatization strategy

The Treasury Ministry has agreed to the Economy Ministry's energy sector privatization strategy, envisaging acceleration of the privatization of power plants and the sale of energy producers and distributors to the same investors. The plan also calls for delaying the sell-offs of those companies, which as yet have no privatization advisors. The latter could also apply to the so called G-4 group of energy distributors from Lublin, Rzeszow, Kielce and Radom, for which an advisor has been selected very recently. A large number of other companies, however, including Stoen from Warsaw and the G-8 group of power distributors from Northern Poland, are almost certain to be sold in 2001. The Ministry is likely to accept mergers and takeovers creating conglomerates of power plants and distributors, such as the Southern Energy Holding (PKE), Lower Silesian Energy or the Regional Energy Group (RGE). The Treasury wants the Economy Ministry to speed up work on solving the problem of long-term energy delivery contracts, about which potential investors have many reservations. (Puls Biznesu, p.4) M.K.