At least two major consulting firms, Ernst & Young and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), submitted offers yesterday to an international tender staged by main power utility PPC for the appointment of an adviser to guide the utility in its effort to carve out and sell new electricity supply firms.

PPC is seeking to take this route as a means of reducing its still-dominant retail market share to less than 50 percent by 2020, a bailout requirement.

The tender, whose contract is worth 2.3 million euros, was originally scheduled to expire on December 12, but prospective bidders were given a deadline extension until December 23, before it was extended to yesterday.

PPC’s administration believes these new electricity supply firms can be established within a three-month period once an agreement with the consulting firm has been signed.

According to the tender, the consulting firm to be awarded the contract will offer its services for an eight-month period, beginning on the date the agreement is signed, which is expected soon.

This essentially means that PPC’s plan should begin taking shape within the first three months of 2017.

In comments offered to journalists yesterday, PPC’s chief executive Manolis Panagiotakis, confirming a preceding energypress report, noted that the utility’s increasingly attractive discount offers of late for clients are part of a strategy aiming to provide the utility additional time and control over its required market share contraction process through the establishment and sale of new subsidiaries, the ultimate aim being to cancel the recently launched NOME auctions.

The NOME auctions were introduced last October, as part of the bailout, to break the utility’s dominance by offering other traders access to PPC’s low-cost lignite and hydropower sources.