The announcement for the privatisation of Casa de Economii si Consemnatiuni (Romanian Savings Bank – CEC) could be published in March next year, with September set as the deadline for selecting a consultant for this process. The privatisation of CEC was confirmed by Prime Minister Adrian Nastase as early as two weeks ago, who said he expected CEC’s sale to begin in two or three months.
“Once we’ve decided to continue the privatisation process in the banking system and noticed the management problem in most cases is generally related to the property type, we are determined to speed up the privatisation process, CEC’s privatisation inclusive, which will begin some time in the next few months. We hope to retain a consultant very soon to provide us with data about the privatisation strategy. As far as I’m concerned, CEC’s privatisation must be finished by the end of next year,” the Prime Minster said.
Banking sources quoted by Mediafax said CEC’s privatisation schedule would be completed by mid April 2004 and the announcement for hiring a consultant would be published by the end of May.
The consultant will assess the situation of the bank from October 2004 through January 2005 and draft the feasibility study, with the Government set to endorse the privatisation strategy in February 2005.
The quoted sources added the Public Finance Ministry and the National Bank of Romania would specify in the privatisation strategy how people’s savings with CEC and the matching interests should be secured by the Banking system deposit guarantee fund. At the same time, any major investment in CEC will be suspended pending endorsement of the privatisation strategy.
CEC’s privatisation will be coordinated by a special committee, whose members will not be allowed to be part of the bank’s Board for three years after they stop being part of the privatisation committee, according to an emergency ordinance draft originated by the Ministry of Finances.
Prompted by the rather slow moving privatisation in Romania, the representatives of the International Monetary Fund have recently asked the Romanian authorities to begin CEC’s privatisation this year. The examples used by the Fund to make its point are Petrom, on the one hand, and BCR, on the other. In Petrom’s case, the deadlines for submitting final bids are postponed from one month to another, while in BCR’s case the completion of the first stage of its privatisation can be expected to occur some time in May. Actually it is quite interesting to see what facts the Romanian officials have when talking about the start of CEC’s privatisation, given that they have been looking for a strategic investor to buy BCR for several years now.
CEC is currently going through an extensive restructuring process that began in 2002 and should end in 2005. oana.nuta@zf.ro