Bogdan Tudorache

The government is working on a new package of measures that could unlock the privatization of Hidroelectrica, market sources told energynomics.ro.

“Thus, the privatization of Hidroelectrica could be unlocked,” the quoted source said, without specifying a deadline for the adoption of the new law. Later during the week, Prime Minister Florin Cîțu confirmed the information, announcing that the Government wants to repeal Law 173/2020 which regulated the prohibition, for a period of 2 years, of alienation of state-owned shares in national companies and corporations, banks and any other companies in which the state has the quality of shareholder.

Currently, the privatization of Hidroelectrica or the sale of any shares, even minority ones, of the state, are prohibited for a period of two years from the approval of the law, namely until the summer of 2022, by a law promoted last year by PSD.

“Listing a minority stake in the stock market does not mean privatization, but the chance to modernize, to make investments,” the Minister of Energy, Virgil Popescu, wrote today on his social networking page.

“But we are not privatizing anything! As I said in the last hearings, we are not privatizing anything! the state must be the majority shareholder in all companies and companies of national strategic interest! And so it will be “, Popescu also stated, thus confirming the intention to list a minority stake in Hidroelectrica.