Rosneft privatization in 2012 in question - Nabiullina
MOSCOW. Dec 27 (Interfax) - The privatization of oil major Rosneft in 2012 is still in question, Economic Development Minister Elvira Nabiullina told reporters.
"In our view, major sales could be carried out next year, including Sovcomflot, which we moved back from this year, and VTB after Sberbank . We are preparing a number of port assets - Murmansk, Arkhangelsk, Vanino, the airline Sibir , SG-Trans," Nabiullina said.
Asked why she did not mention Rosneft , Nabiullina said that "Rosneft is still in question."
"It's in our plans, we are preparing proposals, but the question is to what extent we will manage to do this next year," she said.
The question on Rosneft is that "there are various proposals, including that for Rosneft we should carry out the privatization not only as a sale on the open market, but also through an exchange of assets and so on," Nabiullina said.
Asked what size of a stake might be exchanged, Nabiullina said "any." "In principle any, but tentatively we were looking at 10%," she added.
Responding to a question on what the government had decided about the proposal that state companies should not be sold at a price below that of their initial public offering, Nabiullina said "we must try, if possible, to sell no lower than the IPO price."
"But when a decision is made to sell, it is very multifaceted. We must understand - are we attracting a strategic investor, maybe the strategic investor will come with new technologies, with new markets. Therefore, this must be weighed. To just mechanically say that we are not selling below the IPO is not quite correct," Nabiullina said.
Asked about the order of the offerings of VTB and Sberbank shares, Nabiullina said "they need to be separated somewhat and, in our view, better first Sberbank and then VTB."
"We sold VTB, Sberbank is being prepared, we were supposed to this year. We had such an order initially, so there is probably no sense in reconsidering this order now. There is no reason for VTB to go before Sberbank," Nabiullina said.