The ministries of industry and finance are scheduled to propose to the Cabinet today conditions for a tender for choosing an electricity sector privatization advisor. The two ministries’ proposals differ in the method of selecting an advisor. In any case, the tender for the advisor should be launched by end of December, and the advisor should be selected by mid-February 2001. A Cabinet approval today would be a tangible, if small, step towards CEZ privatization, and as such may help the stock. Separately, the minister of industry suggested on Friday that the privatization tender could be launched in mid-2001 and that the strategic investor (in CEZ and the six distributors being sold together with CEZ) could be selected before the end of next year. Such schedule is relatively optimistic, in our view, but is achievable if there is strong enough commitment on part of the government.
(Ondřej Daťka)