Italy is pressing ahead with plans to list its post office operator this year and its national rail company next year, a senior Treasury official said, adding other state-owned firms will be sold in an bid to raise money to cut public debt. Rome is looking at selling around 40 percent of wholly-owned Poste Italiane, the head of the technical office of the Economy Ministry Fabrizio Pagani told financial daily Il Sole 24 Ore on Saturday.
Both the European Commission and the International Monetary Fund have said Italy was falling behind schedule on its privatisation plan and urged it to speed up disposals to make the economy more efficient and help bring down a 2-trillion-euro public debt. A prospectus for the post office listing will be filed with the market watchdog in August, Pagani said.
The company could go public in October and could bring up to 4 billion euros ($4.4 billion) into state coffers, other Italian papers said on Saturday The privatisations are primarily aimed at reducing the debt and honouring commitments made to the European Union but the companies themselves should also benefit, Pagani said. "Many of those companies have so far lived off of state funds, but the world is changing and these companies... must stand on their own two feet."
The Treasury has made progress towards selling some of the assets held by railway group Ferrovie dello Stato, Pagani said, and the disposal of station operator Grandi Stazioni is at an advanced stage. Rome also aims to sell state-owned air traffic control operator Enav at the end of this year or the beginning of 2016. In April the government cut its target for revenues from the privatisations to 0.4 of gross domestic product per year from a previous target of 0.7 percent of GDP.
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