Nicosia, Nov 14: The Turkish Privatization Authority has decided to offer 51 percent of the shares of Petkim Petrokimya Holding to a consortium made up of Azerbaijan’s Socar, Tukey’s Turcas and Injaz Projects of Saudi Arabia for a total amount of 2.04 billion dollars.

The first bidder with 2.5 billion dollars was Trans-Central Asia Petrochemical Holdings, which comprises Kazakh investment firms CaspiNeft JSC and Investment Production Group Eurasia as well as Russia’s Troika Dialog.

Zaman newspaper reported that the government of Prime Minister Tayyip Ertogan, faced with a wave of popular resentment because Troika Dialog allegedly had Armenian shareholders, decided to pass over the first bidder and give the shares of Petkim to Socar, Tucas and Inajaz.

Eighteen contenders had been pre-qualified in the tender concerning the privatization of Petkim. They were both domestic and foreign firms such as Tupra, Afken, Sanko Petrochemical, Ak Entreprise, Zorlu Holding, Calik, Socak-Turcas, TransCentralAsia, Ineos Holding, Injaz Projects Company, Naksan, DEH, Basel Demiroren, Kiler, Firat and Tatneft acquired prequalification to submit their bids. (ANI)