Possible six-month delay in privatising Electrica Muntenia Sud

Electrica Muntenia Sud’s privatisation may be pushed towards the end of this year, as Electrica and auditor PricewaterhouseCoopers are now discussing an extension of the deadline for the consultant to draw up the report, sources close to the talks say.
The consulting contract for Electrica Muntenia Sud signed by Electrica and PricewaterhouseCoopers last fall stipulated the audit report was supposed to be finished in five months, i.e. this April.
The quoted sources, however, told Ziarul Financiar that both parties had been discussing an extension of the time frame allotted for the consultant to devise the report by “a month or two” and of its tasks since the end of last month. They added the privatisation contract for Muntenia Sud was to be signed after the ones for Banat and Dobrogea branches, some time by the end of the year.
Electrica Muntenia Sud’s privatisation had been initially scheduled for the first half this year, therefore the signing of the privatisation contract might see an about six-month delay.
The officials of the Office for State’s Interests and Industrial Privatisation had not provided any comment by the time the story was ready for print.
Why would anyone seek to postpone the filing of the report by the consultant, anyway? One of the reasons could be the consultant’s failure to put it together, given that the deadline for filing it was April, which expired. On the other hand, another reason could be the announcement of the German group RWE, regarded as the top candidate to take over Muntenia Sud electricity distribution company since last year, which said it had no plans to buy anything in the area this year.
Electrica’s Muntenia Sud branch has more than one million household and industrial consumers in Bucharest and in Ilfov and Giurgiu County. Specialists estimate Muntenia Sud’s market value to be $200-$250 million, while the privatisation of the electricity distribution in Romania is an over one billion dollar business. adrian.mirsanu@zf.ro