Turkey to work on lottery, horse racing sell-off plans: Minister

ISTANBUL

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Turkey has abandoned a move to seek bids for the privatization of its national lottery in March and will continue to work on the process for it and the country’s horse races, Finance Minister Naci Ağbal told private broadcaster NTV on Jan. 9. 

“We have ended the process of taking bids for the national lottery, which had earlier been set for March … We have now decided to run the process for both the country’s horse races and the lottery,” Ağbal said, as reported by Reuters.

The privatization administration had in October extended the deadline for national lottery bids until March. In an auction for the lottery back in 2014, the winning and runner-up companies failed to pay a winning price of $2.76 billion.

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 for until April 15, 2015, to finalize the process due to a sharp loss in the value of the Turkish Lira. 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. 

However, 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 - was similarly unable to make the payment on time.