Bulgaria's government is expected to list in the next three months its 33% minority stake in the three power distributors in the country in a bid to enliven the local stock exchange and boost revenues.

The local units of Austria's EVN AG and Germany's E.ON are expected to launch their initial public offerings (IPOs) in November or December and that of CEZ – at the end of the year or in January, the exchange's chief executive, Ivan Takev, told Dow Jones Newswires on Tuesday on the sidelines of a Marketforce- and IEA-sponsored European exchange summit in London.

Experts have repeatedly called on the government to launch high-quality initial public offerings to bring back to life the capital market, dented now by low liquidity and lack of quality stock.

The sorry performance of the capital market at the moment has been attributed to the fact that the foreign investors withdrew their IPOs once the crisis set in and, more troublingly, still do not seem interested in coming back.

The privatization tender, through which Bulgaria sought to boost public revenues by some BGN 80 M, managed to sell state stakes in only eight companies on Sofia stock exchange at the end of last year.

The sale of the minority stakes in the electricity distributors on the stock exchange have been said to be a must-do task in 2011.

In 2004, the Balkan country sold 67% in its three power distributors to Germany's E.ON, Austria's EVN and Czech CEZ.

E.ON serves households in North-Eastern Bulgaria, including the Black Sea city of Varna. Czech power utility CEZ supplies power to over 2 million households and companies in western Bulgaria, while EVN serves the south-eastern parts of the country.

We need your support so Novinite.com can keep delivering news and information about Bulgaria! Thank you!