Uzbekistan, Tashkent, 14 October / Trend corr. T.Jukov /The Uzbek Government has informed of prolonging of the tender to privatize the Uzbekugol OJSC, Tashkent based correspondent of Trend reported.
"The tender proposals admission term will expire at 12:00pm on 10 November 2008," is stated by the State Tender Auction Commission attached to the State Property Sale to foreign investors. Initially, the tender proposals were planned to admit in August 2008.
Under the tender conditions, some 35.55% shares package is planned to sell to foreign investors. Package's start price is $30,579,800. The new owner of Uzbekugol must assume additional investment liabilities in the sum of $232mln.
Company's analysis and marketing department reported to Trend that currently, 51% share package of the company is owned by the state, 5% - are privileged shares, 44% -share for free sale and 35.55% will be sold to foreign investors through tender auction. Company's authorized fund is 29.42bln sums (about $22mln).
Uzbekugol is the largest company producing and processing coal in the Central Asia. Company carries out production and sale of coal and kaolin. The coal industrial production is being implemented in three fields -Angrensk (Tashkent), Shargunsk and Baysunsk, Annually, Uzbekugol produces in average 3mln tons of coal (2.7mln in 2007. Coal's main user is the power energy sector which uses about 85% of the coal.
Under the State Committee on Geology and Mineral Resources, Uzbekistan owns coal reserves in the amount of 1.9mln tons including brown coal - 1,853bln tons and coal - 47mln tons. The forecast resources prevail over 5.7bln tons of coal. The main explored reserves of coal are concentrated in the south regions of the country - in Surkhandaryinsk and Kashkadaryinsk provinces.
In 2007, the Kazakh Government worked out and approved a modernization program to make technological and technique re-arm in the coal production for 2007-2012. The program enables to provide growth in coal production by developing of opened development method of the Angrensk field, which is the largest coal reserve in the country.
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