You're reading: Yushchenko pledges to sell off energy distributors

Prime Minister pledges to seek strategic investors to pay cash to purchase state stakes in nation’s 27 distributers, considered some of nation’s richest nuggets

Minister Viktor Yushchenko said Wednesday.

"This privatization will be public and exclusively for cash," Yushchenko said.

The International Monetary Fund and other creditors long have urged Ukraine to reform its energy sector. But privatization in this area has moved slowly and was virtually suspended since 1998 while officials feuded over how to sell the lucrative companies.

Under a 1999 presidential decree, the state was to retain a 25 percent stake in 26 regional distributors and a controlling stake in the Kiev region distributor. But the Cabinet recently agreed to drop the requirement, Yushchenko said.

The regional distributors are considered attractive properties as each holds a monopoly or near monopoly on electricity supplies in its region.

The move to fully privatize them may help attract foreign investors, who have shunned Ukraine’s energy sector because of ever-changing privatization rules and the government’s failure to stop the country’s protracted economic decline.

The state sold controlling share packages in seven regional distributors in 1998, after which numerous media reports accused the authorities of selling the distributors to obscure companies that might have been linked to the government.

Yushchenko insisted Wednesday that all investors will be given equal chances.

"Our doctrine is to provide equal conditions for all the investors," he said.