Macedonia Again Plans to Sell Postal Service

Macedonia's Transport Ministry has issued a call to choose a consultancy firm tasked with coming up with the best privatization model for the national postal service, Makedonska Posta AD.

The consultancy firm should have a positive business record of providing consultancy on a similar project in the past three years. The deadline for offers is August 31 and the bids will be reviewed in September, the ministry said.

The winning firm will get some 140,000 euros for the job.

The ministry and the director of the post office, Faadis Rexehpi, did not respond to an inquiry from BIRN about the reason for the call and their plans.

In principle, there is nothing wrong in engaging consultants, a former director of the postal service, Rafiz Aliti, said.

However, he said the country "should first invest more in modernization of the post office, which have not been done for a long time. As it is, I fear the sale price for postal shares will not be as high as we would like," Aliti told BIRN.

Aliti said that even without privatization, with investment, the postal service could be made profitable for the country and its 2,500 employees.

This is the second attempt in the past six years to find ways to sell the postal service.

After previous failed attempts to sell 49 per cent of the shares to foreign companies, in 2009 Macedonia engaged the consultancy firm KPMG to devise a sale strategy.

Despite speculation that big international players were interested in purchasing, talk of selling the post office subsided in 2011.

The new call for a consultancy firm comes amid deep political crisis, however, and coincides with last week's EU brokered deal between Macedonia's political parties that foresees...