The council of ministers approved yesterday a new privatisation strategy for the sea shipping company Navibulgare. The document will have to receive the approval of the parliament in order to come into force. The draft envisages a closed-bidding tender for 70% of the company. The remaining 30% stake will be offered to the new majority owner at a later stage. Part of the residual shares could be floated on the stock exchange but only in case that they are not purchased by the main stakeholder. Only strategic investors would be allowed to bid for the 70% stake. The definition for strategic investor includes legal entities with rented shipping volumes of at least 1.3mn tonnes of dead weight on time-charter contracts for each of the last 3 years or consortiums in which at least 70% of the equity capital is held by a company meeting the above mentioned requirements for strategic investor. It is rumoured that the strategy is prepared in a way that will favour a consortium of local shipping and forwarding companies, most likely linked to the country’s largest holding company Chimimport.

The ministry of transports hopes that the privatisation strategy will be quickly approved by the parliament so that the tender could take place by the fall of this year. Navibulgare is one of the biggest state companies with total assets of BGN 946mn (EUR 484mn) as of the end of last year and a net asset value of BGN 886mn. The net profit of the company dropped nearly two times y/y to BGN 22.4mn last year on flat revenues of BGN 390.6mn.