Investor interest in main power utility PPC’s approaching bailout-required sale offer of lignite units is restricted to east European firms, especially Polish and Czech, as well as China, all of which are expected to seek the backing of local partners, sources have informed.

Greek officials, who will discuss the PPC unit sale plan at the Directorate-General for Energy and Directorate-General for Competition in Brussels on Monday, will present these expressions of interest made so far as part of the effort to examine the level of attractiveness of Greece’s lignite-only offer.

The Greek sale plan will need to be deemed as attractive for investors if the European Commission is to endorse it. The offer will also need to represent 40 percent of PPC’s lignite capacity and also permit the utility to remain sustainable.

PPC officials contend their sale package plan was prepared with genuine intentions and does not aim to undermine and delay the sale procedure. Even so, it does not seem capable of luring central European investors, as was highlighted by the absence of EdF representation in French President Emmanuel Macron’s delegation assembled for an official two-day visit to Athens last week.

France’s EdF, which already maintains a Greek market presence through Italian energy firm Edison, ought to have been represented in Macron’s visiting delegation if the PPC sale plan was viewed favorably by European investors.