Bulgaria seeks sale of cigarette mills by year-end

SOFIA, Feb 29 (Reuters) - Bulgaria hopes to wrap up the long-delayed disposal of cigarette maker Bulgartabak Holding BTHG.BB by the end of the year, Economy Minister Petar Dimitrov said on Friday.

Bulgartabak has offered to close two of its four cigarette mills to boost its competitiveness and so the state can generate a better price when it sells its stake of around 80 percent, preferably on the stock market, Dimitrov told the parliament.

"The companies should be traded on the bourse as quickly as possible," Dimitrov said, "but I want the consent of workers in those factories."

Dimitrov, who as economy minister is the principal of the state-owned firm, said two loss-making mills in Plovdiv and Stara Zagora could be offered on the stock exchange within two months and its better-performing mills in Sofia and Blagoevgrad disposed of independently within nine months.

He said this was one of four options for disposing of the firm, which has gone through four unsuccessful privatisation attempts since the 1990s due to political wrangling.

The second was to offer all four mills for sale at the same time later in the year.

The third idea was to sell all four sites immediately and the final option was to shut down Plovdiv and Stara Zagora while seeking a strategic partner through a tender for the other two. The four mills employ 3,000 people. Tobacco is a sensitive issue in the new European Union member, where half of the adult population smoke.

Strong foreign competition has eaten Bulgartabak's dominant market share on the domestic market since 2007, when Bulgaria joined the European Union and its liberalised market.

The last attempt to sell Bulgartabak failed in 2005 when British American Tobacco (BATS.L) withdrew its 200 million euro ($272 million) bid after the ethnic Turkish MRF party, a junior coalition member in the previous and present government, blocked the deal.

Analysts say the sale delays mean the country may now get only 230 million levs ($179 million) for its cigarette maker.

(Reporting by Maya Filadska, writing by Tsvetelia Ilieva; Editing by David Hulmes)