Indian government is interested in purchasing shares of one of the biggest world producers of the potassium fertilizers Belaruskali, informed Mandoj Bharci, an Indian ambassador in Minsk, during a press conference on Wednesday.
Mr. Bharci also mentioned a trade agreement between an Indian company and Belarus. The agreement, signed last week, is to last 9 months and sells 1.2 million tones of potassium for more than a half a billion dollars.
India is interested in purchasing 20-25% of Belaruskali shares, for 6 to 7 billion dollars, according to high-level officials quoted by an Indian newspaper “Mint”.
In June Aleksander Lukashenka estimated that the company is worth around 30 billion dollars, adding that the price might change due to the inflation. The Belarusian president informed that he had already received offers from interested buyers, ready to pay the price.
According to an informal sources, Belarus has been negotiating conditions of selling Belaruskali with investors from Russia and China, among them – a Russian billionaire and an owner of the Russian giant company „Uralkali”, Mr. Suleyman Kerymov. Kerymov offered a 1 billion dollar loan to Belarus as a collateral for potassium products.
One of the conditions of receiving a loan from the Euroasian Economic Commonwealth, was for Belarus to privatize state-owned companies for at least 2.5 billion dollars, just in 2011.
Belsat
