Kosovo eyes Turkey’s Çalık-Limak for bid
PRISTINA- Agence France-Presse
Kosovo’s privatization committee said June 8 it preferred a Turkish consortium’s bid for the state-run power distributor because it offered a higher price that its Egyptian rival, an official said.“The offer of 26.3 million euros ($32.7 million) on behalf of Çalik & Limak Holding will be proposed to the government as our preferred winner,” the economic development minister and head of the privatization committee, Besim Beqaj, told reporters.
He added that the second bidder in the tender for a 100 percent stake in ailing power distributor (KEDS) –which is a unit of the state-run power company (KEK) and serves 400,000 customers– was Egypt’s El Sewedy Electrics A.E.
The Egyptian company offered 22.8 million euros ($28.3 million) for Kosovo’s only power distributor.
It is expected that the government will accept the Turkish bid as it earlier announced that there was no fixed price for the power distributor and it would be sold to the company which offered the highest price.
A lack of investments in the energy sector has led to frequent power shortages even though Kosovo sits on huge lignite or brown coal reserves estimated at up to 14 billion tonnes.Two coal-fired plants near Pristina produce almost all of Kosovo’s energy. The government is planning to begin building a third coal-fired plant in 2013 by attracting foreign investors.
