Estonia Won't Sell Eesti Post Until After March Elections, Minister Says

Estonia’s government won’t consider the partial sale of postal service AS Eesti Post until after elections next March, Economy Minister Juhan Parts said.

Prime Minister Andrus Ansip’s Cabinet agreed in December 2008 to look for a strategic investor for Eesti Post by 2010 after the Baltic country opened its market in 2009. The government currently lacks unity on the issue, Parts said in an interview with Bloomberg news in Tallinn yesterday.

“It’s not possible to hold rational discussions on this before the elections,” Parts said. “The next government will inherit the choice of keeping the company in state hands, involving a strategic investor, or selling a majority.”

Estonia, which is due to become the third east European country to join the euro area in January, has the lowest public debt to gross domestic product ratio in the European Union, reducing pressure on the government to sell state-owned companies.

The government will decide on how much financing it needs to attract next year for a capital increase in utility Eesti Energia AS after results from a tender to build two oil shale- fired power units in northeastern Estonia are released next month, Parts said. Estonia may not need to tap capital markets or issue a bond as the financing may be taken entirely from government reserves, he said.

Eesti Energia, the biggest Baltic electric utility, received bids in July from Canada’s SNC-Lavalin Group Inc. and France’s Alstom SA for the two units, each with a capacity of as much as 300 megawatts.

To contact the reporter on this story: Ott Ummelas in Tallinn at oummelas@bloomberg.net

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