ANKARA - Socar-Turcas-Injaz, an Azerbaijani-Turkish consortium, took over Turkey`s Petrochemical Holding Co. (Petkim) on Friday and pledged to invest at least 3 billion USD more in the next 5 years.
Socar-Turcas-Injaz paid in advance 1.6 billion of 2.04 billion USD to buy 51 percent of Petkim`s shares, and signed a contract with the Turkish government in Ankara. The consortium is expected to pay the rest 380 million USD in three years.
Socar-Turcas-Injaz plans to set up an oil refinery in Ceyhan town, an energy hub in southern Turkey, head of the consortium told reporters at the takeover ceremony.
Erdal Aksoy said the consortium would not dismiss any of the employees at Petkim and it aimed to double the capacity of the petrochemicals company.
Socar-Turcas-Injaz took out 625 million USD of loans from two Turkish banks, Akbank and Garanti, Aksoy said.
Turkey held the tender to privatize 51 percent of the petrochemical company in July 2007. The TransCentralAsia Petrochemical Holding consortium submitted the highest bid in the tender worth 2.05 billion USD.
However, the tender committee decided to award the first runner-up, Socar-Turcas-Injaz consortium, with the tender. This consortium offered 2,040 million USD. Then, the Higher Board of Privatization approved the sale.
Turkish Finance Minister Kemal Unakitan said privatization of Petkim would be the start of development of petrochemical industry in Turkey.
"I believe that Petkim will become a major global company," Unakitan told the ceremony.
"Turkey fulfilled 45 billion USD of privatizations so far. We will now finish others. We will privatize power grids, highways, national lottery and sugar plants this year. We will sell off remaining companies one by one and then complete privatizations," he said.
(TÇ-MS)