The management of the Bulgarian Stock Exchange is expected to confer with the prime minister this week to discuss the privatization of shares in state-owned companies to enliven the local stock exchange and boost revenues.

“The meeting with Prime Minister Boyko Borisov was scheduled to take place last Friday, but was postponed,” Finance Minister Simeon Djankov told Darik radio.

Fifty companies, currently managed by the economy ministry, will go into the recently set-up State Consolidation company, which bundles minority stakes in state-owned firms prior to sale, the government decided last month.

These are operating companies, which are not on the “prohibited list” that features state-owned, banned from privatization companies, such as Bulgartransgas, the gas pipeline operator.

The measure is part of an anti-crisis package the government adopted earlier in April and aims to raise some BGN 250 M from the sale of its minority stakes on the Bulgarian Stock exchange.

The money raised will be a contribution to closing the BGN 1.5 B budget deficit that emerged in the first quarter of 2010. The total effect of the 60 anti-crisis is supposed to amount to BGN 1.6 B.

Bulgaria's government has revised up to 1% its economic growth forecast for this year as recovering exports bolster the expansion.

Prime Minister Boyko Borisov’s government previously estimated the economy would grow 0.3% after a contraction of 5.1% in 2009 as investments dwindled and consumption shrank.

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