Turkey attempts to privatise national lottery again

Turkey will formally advertise a new tender for the privatisation of its national lottery later this week, said Finance Minister Naci Ağbal.

Our readers will recall previous attempts at privatising the entity failed to attract sufficient bidders and were bogged down by the transfer of operational rights issues.

A Turkish consortium emerged the top bidder in the last round in 2014 offering $2.755 billion, however the deal fell through because of a “sharp loss in the Turkish Lira’s value”. Defaulting to the second highest bidder, that deal also failed because the joint venture who had bid on the tender missed the payment deadline.

According to Ağbal, a number of crucial revisions and changes have been made in the hope that the new model will attract more bidders than before.

The government will reportedly take bids until August 5, 2016 with the top bidderawarded the 10-year license.