The Bulgarian government has approved a sale of three distributional companies to CEZ Power Company today

The Bulgarian government has approved a privatization draft agreement for a sale of 67 per cent of shares in distributional companies in the Sophia and Pleven areas and in the city of Sophia. Under the Bulgarian government decision the agreements must be signed by both sides within ten days.

The first instalment in the amount of 20 per cent (almost 1.8 billion CZK) will be transferred to a blocked account on the day when the agreement is signed.

It is the biggest foreign investment in the history of the Czech Republic. No Czech firm has realized an investment of 281.5 billion EUR abroad so far.

"It is a historical milestone in the development of the CEZ Group as well as the Czech power industry. We are beginning to build up a new stage, namely an international stage. This is the first step towards the fulfilment of our aim to become the leader of Central and East-European electricity market," said to that Martin Roman, Chairman of the Board of Directors and CEO of CEZ.

The West group consists of three Bulgarian distributional companies

Power distributional company - Capital of EAD - authorized capital of 1.928 million BGN

Power distributional company - Sophia region EAD - authorized capital of 2.149 million BGN

Power distributional company - Pleven EAD - authorized capital of 1.206 million BGN

The total authorized capital of the companies of this group represents the amount of 5.283 million BGN, which is about 88.226 million CZK.

The West group operates ca 1.9 million customers. The CEZ Group has had roughly 3.4 million customers up to now.

The total electricity amount supplied by this group represents ca 7.6 TWh.

Ladislav Kriz, Press Officer, CEZ, a. s.

12. 11. 2004