The offers submitted by all three bidders in the tender for the purchase of a 25% stake in Serbia’s indebted state-controlled drug maker Galenika contain certain technical flaws, the country’s economy ministry said, giving the potential investors two weeks to make corrections.
Hence, India’s Cadila Pharmaceuticals, Brazil’s biggest pharmaceutical firm EMS S.A., and a consortium of Britain’s Frontier Pharma Limited and Russian LLC NPA Petrovax Pharm have to amend their documents by August 16, the ministry said late on Tuesday.
After the deadline expires, the commission handling the tender procedure will open the financial bids only of those bidders who have made the necessary technical corrections.
The bids will be ranked according to the number of jobs proposed and the plans for recapitalisation of the company as the two most important criteria.
The government, which owns 70% of Galenika, will then announce the best bidder and it will have up to 90 days to negotiate a final deal with it.
Galenika is one of the remaining 17 state-owned Serbian companies bound to be privatised or liquidated as part of commitments which the country has undertaken under a 1.2 billion euro stand-by arrangement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Galenika owes some 130 million euro ($145.6 million) to state-owned companies and another 70 million euro to banks.
Source; See News
