Russian gas giant Gazprom (GAZP.RS) didn't bid for Greece's natural gas company Depa for fear that its finances would deteriorate before the deal closed, a process that Gazprom said could take up to a year.
Russian gas giant Gazprom (GAZP.RS) didn't bid for
Greece
's
natural gas company Depa for fear that its finances would deteriorate before
the deal closed, a process that Gazprom said could take up to a year.
"We didn't receive enough guarantees that Depa's financial situation
wouldn't worsen by the closing of the deal," Gazprom's spokesman Sergei
Kupriyanov said in an emailed statement Monday.
Greece
said
it failed to attract a single bid for Depa, one of the crown jewels of its
ambitious, but long-delayed plan to sell state assets to help repair the country's
finances. The deadline for bids was Monday.
Gazprom's Chief Executive Alexei Miller had visited
Athens
three
times in recent weeks for talks on Depa. But Mr. Kupriyanov said the
state-controlled firm, which supplies the bulk of
Greece
's
gas, hadn't made an offer because of "significant risks."
Depa "is already experiencing serious problems with non-payments of
consumers," he said. "It is facing a restructuring with the spinning
off of Desfa (
Greece
's gas
grid operator), and the participants in the tender received no guarantees that
the state regulation of Depa wouldn't worsen."
Since its first bailout in May 2010,
Greece
has
steadily failed to meet targets for its privatization program.
Athens
has
repeatedly scaled back an earlier goal of raising 50 billion euros ($66.1
billion) from asset sales by the end of the decade.
It now aims for EUR11.1 billion in privatization proceeds by the end of 2016,
EUR25 billion by 2020 and EUR50 billion over an unspecified period.
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