Turks Lottery Privatisation Date Now Jan. 9

Published: Tuesday, October 07, 2008 Online-Casinos.com

TURKS LOTTERY PRIVATISATION DATE NOW JAN. 9

Strong competition from bidders prompts extension


The Turkish government has re-set the date for the privatisation of the national lottery Milli Piyango (see previous Online-Casinos.com/InfoPowa reports) to January 9 2009 following strong bidding from interested international parties, ReporterNet informs.

Companies interested in the tender include Lottomatica unit GTech, Greek companies Opap and Intralot , Turkey's Koc Group , Austrian Lotteries, U.S. firm Scientific Games and Britain's Camelot.

The privatisation will involve a re-branding exercise, and the appointment of a regulatory authority for the Turkish lottery business.

ReporterNet asserts that the sell-off is part of a wide privatisation programme which the country is implementing in order to generate much-needed foreign revenues to help ease a bloated current account deficit.