Morocco plans to sell its majority stake in leading shipping company Comanav by the first quarter of next year, Comanav's chief executive said, as part of wider reforms of the state-run maritime sector.
"An international tender to privatise Comanav will be launched in mid-December and we should know the name of the successful bidder during February 2007," Toufiq Ibrahimi told Reuters in an interview. The state has a 76 percent stake in Comanav while private investors hold the rest, government officials said.
Ibrahimi would not comment on the expected price of the stake but government sources valued the company at about 3.0 billion dirhams ($360 million) and said the minimum price for the state's holding was at least 2.2 billion dirhams.
Morocco, eager to spur exports and improve economic competitiveness, is scrapping its monopoly of 16 ports under refoms plans which became effective on Tuesday.
Transport and Public Works Minister Karim Gellab said last week he expected tariffs to be slashed by up to 30 percent immediately, followed by future cuts of more than 30 per cent. Morocco has earned more than $8 billion from privatising 71 companies over the past 10 years. Comanav earns most of its revenue from passenger and goods transport between Morocco and Europe, where most of the country's five million expatriates live.
It posted a turnover of about 2.0 billion dirhams ($238.7 million) in 2005 with net profit of more than 70 million, said Ibrahimi. He gave no comparative figure for 2004 but said the company posted a 300 million dirham loss in 2001 on turnover of 800 million.
Comments
Comments are closed.