SARAJEVO, Feb 28 - An international tender for a majority stake in Bosnia's sole aluminium plant Aluminij Mostar will be published on March 5, a senior official said on Wednesday.
An 88 percent stake in Aluminij, equally-owned by the Muslim-Croat federation government and small shareholders, will be offered for 150.3 million Bosnian marka ($102.5 million), said federation privatisation agency head Resad Zutic.
The remaining 12 percent will remain in the ownership of Croatian TLM company, which helped Aluminij, based in the southern town of Mostar, to restart production after the 1992-95 war.
Zutic said in a statement that the tender would target companies with an international reputation in production and processing of aluminium. It will be open until April 23.
A buyer would have to maintain output, keep on all employees and pay for the firm in cash, he said.
In December, the agency planned to issue bid invitations to several selected companies but federation Industry and Energy Minister Vahid Heco blocked the process, saying that Aluminij needed to be offered through a public tender.
The bid invitations targeted leading producers such as Alcoa, Alcan Inc. and RUSAL, as well as Aluminij's long-time partners Norway's Norsk Hydro and Swiss-based metals trader Glencore International AG .
In January, the federation government annulled Heco's decision.
But Aluminij's management, which has insisted that leading metal producers and its proven partners should be favoured in the sell-off, agreed to a public tender to make the process transparent.
Aluminij recorded output of 121,000 tonnes of metal in 2006 and exports worth some 240 million euro ($317.3 million).
Bosnia is made up of the Muslim-Croat federation and the Serb Republic, both with their own governments and parliaments.
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