Greece to sell majority stake in TSO by end of the year

The Greek state expects to sell a majority stake in the country’s electricity transmission operator by the end of this year, deputy minister of energy Makis Papageorgiou told ICIS on Tuesday.

Greek state-owned incumbent Public Power Corporation (PPC) is in the process of auctioning a majority stake in ADMIE as part of upcoming market reform.

“The tender and the whole process of selling ADMIE will be concluded by the end of the year,” said Papageorgiou, speaking to ICIS on the sidelines of the Future of Greek Gas and Power Markets conference in Athens.

The move is part of a process to unbundle the control over electricity transmission assets from electricity supplier PPC. Investors have until 9 May to make offers for the 66% shares package.

The launch of the sale follows a government plan to liberalise the energy market set to start in September.

The proposed sale of the ADMIE stake triggered strikes in January and prevented market operator LAGIE from calculating the Greek electricity pool price, known as the system marginal price. Despite this, the parliament approved the sale in March ( see EDEM 7 March 2014 ).

Energy regulator RAE was supposed to publish the pool price for the days of the strike at some time in February, but has so far not done this. Sophie Udubasceanu