A tender staged by TAIPED, the state privatization fund, to recruit a financial consultant for the planned sale of main power utility PPC’s 17 percent has been declared void, confirming the fund’s intention to delay this specific privatization until the details of an upcoming bailout-required sale effort offering 40 percent of the power utility’s lignite capacity have been finalized, according to Greek daily Kathimerini.

The privatization of PPC’s 17 percent would officially reduce the Greek State’s control in the utility to 34.12 percent.

TAIPED president Lila Tsitsogiannopoulou had recently told of the fund’s preference to delay the 17 percent sale of PPC until the details of the utility’s lignite package sale, just delivered to the European Commission for assessment and approval, are finalized.

The TAIPED chief wants to avoid any PPC sale intiatives for as long as the utility’s asset base remains fluid.

On another privatization front, TAIPED has not ruled out a further delay in the effort to stage a new tender offering 66 percent of DESFA, the natural gas grid operator, needed following the eventual collapse, late last year, of a long-lasting initial sale effort.

The possible delay in the new DESFA sale has been linked to RAE’s (Regulatory Authority for Energy) current work leading to gas surcharge revisions for the next four years. This process is likely to delay the DESFA tender by one to two months, sources were noted as saying in the Kathimerini report. As a result, the DESFA tender would be staged in 2018 rather than this year.

The new natural gas surcharges will promise further transparency for investors, the Kathimerini sources noted.