ATHENS, Jan 12 (Reuters) – Greece solely obtained a bid from China’s Cosco Group for a majority stake in Piraeus Port Authority, the operator of the nation’s greatest port, the privatisation company stated on Tuesday.

The leftist authorities of Alexis Tsipras halted the port privatisation after successful elections in January final 12 months however resumed the method beneath the 86 billion-euro bailout deal it agreed with its euro zone companions in August.

Privatisations, a key factor of Greece’s bailouts since 2010, have produced income of solely 3.5 billion euros to this point.

Athens concluded a 1.2 billion-euro airport leasing take care of Germany’s Fraport in December, hoping this might assist it to fulfill its goal for privatisation proceeds of three billion euros this 12 months.

The closing bids for a 51 % stake in Piraeus Port had been submitted on Dec. 21. The potential consumers weren’t made public though there was hypothesis that Cosco was the only bidder.

The privatisation company stated it’s going to ask the bidder to boost its supply.

Greece has stated that Cosco, Denmark’s container terminal operator APM Terminals and Philippines-based International Container Terminal Services had been within the sale.

The sale of a 51 % stake in Piraeus might fetch about $179 million, based mostly on the corporate’s market worth on Tuesday.

Would-be consumers might choose to amass a further 16 % stake over 5 years after finishing obligatory investments of about 300 million euros.

he port, a gateway to Asia, jap Europe and north Africa, dealt with 16.8 million passengers and three.6 million 20-foot equal models (TEUs) of containers in 2014.

Cosco has been working one of many port’s container terminals since 2009 and is investing 230 million euros to construct a second container terminal on the port.

Cosco will merge with China Shipping within the Chinese authorities’s newest effort to make the business extra aggressive globally. A mixed entity could be the world’s fourth-largest container shipper, with a market share of roughly 8.1 %. (Reporting by Angeliki Koutantou; modifying by David Clarke)

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