Turkey to formally advertise new tender for national lottery privatization on May 6: Minister

ANKARA

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Turkey will formally advertise a tender to privatize its national lottery on May 6 and plans to take an initial bid for the tender on Aug. 5, said the finance minister on May 4. 

The licenses for the National Lottery Directorate, dubbed Milli Piyango in Turkish, will last for 10 years, Finance Minister Naci Ağbal said at a press conference in Ankara.        

“We plan to announce the tender for the national lottery games lottery on May 6,” he noted, as quoted Reuters. 

“We then plan to take bids on Aug. 5,” he added. 

Turkey’s past attempts to privatize the lottery have so far been unsuccessful.

Ağbal noted that a number of crucial revisions and changes were made in the tender specification, adding that this model would attract more bidders than the previous tries.  

“In the previous tender, the transfer of the operational rights was the case. The new tender has, however, been prepared as a private law contract…We will hold the tender on dollar-basis, but the investors will have the opportunity to make their payments in Turkish Lira. While the pre-deposit payment was named as 40 percent of the contract value in the previous tender, this amount has now been decreased to 20 percent…The investor can also add new games, but the gaming conditions of them will be subject to the approval of National Lottery Directorate,”Ağbal said. 

The top bidder of the previous tender was a Turkish consortium of two experienced gaming companies that emerged triumphant from a fierce competition to earn the 10-year operational rights of Turkey’s national lottery, after placing the highest bid of $2.755 billion in a privatization tender held July 15, 2014. The consortium, however, asked until April 15, 2015, to finalize the process because of a sharp loss in the Turkish Lira’s value. The Finance Ministry then said the country’s national lottery privatization tender process would probably continue with the second highest bidder, rather than give more time to the top bidder to sign a deal.

The second highest bidder, a joint venture of a Central Anatolian company owned by jeweler Ahlatcı and a Turkish company, ERG, also run by Turkish Lottery Holding, however, could not make the payment on time. Therefore, the government announced that a new tender would be held.