August 21 (SeeNews) - Bulgaria's Privatisation Agency said on Thursday it has approved the sale of 100% of the country's 630-megawatt thermal power plant Bobov Dol to local Consortium Energy MK for the call price of 100 million levs ($75 million/51 million euro).
The buyer is obliged to invest 35 million euro in Bobov Dol power plant in the next five years, to buy no less than 1.75 million tonnes of Bulgarian coal annually by the end of 2011 and to invest in environment protection projects, the Privatisation Agency said in a statement.
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In March, the agency called a new tender for Bobov Dol after the first attempt to sell it failed last year. Consortium Energy MK was picked to buy the plant in June after the second bidder in the tender, Bulgaria's Mining Company, was disqualified due to document irregularities.
In May 2007 the asset-selling body cancelled a procedure for the sale of Bobov Dol to Greece's Public Power Corp (PPC) after the Greek buyer refused to sign the sale agreement. The key controversies that hindered the conclusion of the deal back then were the permit Bulgaria's Environmental Ministry had to issue to set the level of harmful gas emissions of the plant and the condition that the new owner had to buy coal from the nearby mine, the agency's head Todor Nikolov told SeeNews last year.
(1 euro = 1.95583 Bulgarian levs)