Kuwait revived on Wednesday a plan to sell off state stakes in scores of local firms with the launch of a public offer of about half the state's 49.2 percent stake in Mobiles Telecommunications Company, Kuwait's largest mobile firm, reported the Gulf Daily News on Thursday.
Finance Minister Youssef Al Ibrahim said that the sale was the official re-launch of a program halted in 1998 when the Kuwait Stock Exchange index started its long decline to five-year lows in January 2001.
The state has stakes in some 21 listed firms worth over one billion dinars ($3.3b), in addition to other similar holdings, mostly acquired in a rescue plan after a spectacular collapse of an unregulated bourse in 1982, said the paper.
"Everything is on the list ... (but) some of the ones we are not considering selling now are those which have to do with food," said the minister – Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
