Croatia Airlines privatisation “unlikely before 2023”
Croatia Airlines is expected to remain state-owned for at least another two years, the company has said. Prior to the coronavirus pandemic the Croatian government set a deadline to privatise the carrier by June 2020. “The privatisation process was halted at the onset of the Covid-19 crisis. This has been done due to unfavourable circumstances and force majeure. Given IATA projections for the aviation industry and the uncertainty surrounding the duration of the corona crisis, it is unlikely this process will be resumed before 2023”, the company said. It added, “Croatia Airlines, as Croatia’s national carrier, represents a strategic part of Croatia’s transport infrastructure, and its importance has been amplified during the ongoing crisis because the company has contributed in maintaining the country’s connectivity. Despite the extraordinary circumstances, at the beginning of March 2020, Croatia Airlines continued to operate on a reduced scale, while most foreign carriers suspended flights to the country in mid-March”.
The Croatian Minister for Sea, Transport and Infrastructure, Oleg Butković, previously said the government would resume Croatia Airlines’ privatisation process once the coronavirus crisis stabilises. “At the start of 2020 we had two parties interested in Croatia Airlines and that process was advancing quite well. We were about the enter the second phase of negotiations, which included finalising details. However, corona came, and everything was halted because the entire industry has been hard hit”, Mr Butković said. He added, “When the situation begins to improve and normalise, we will resume the search for a strategic partner. There was interest, it’s not as if no one was looking at Croatia Airlines, but we will have to wait a bit more”.
Prior to the pandemic, Greece's Aegean Airlines and Spanish regional carrier Air Nostrum had both expressed interest in acquiring shares in Croatia Airlines. The next phase of the privatisation process was to involve the government announcing a tender for the submission of binding bids and setting out the number of shares it was willing to sell in the company. It previously noted it would offer a stake of up to 70%. Croatia Airlines registered a 47.3 million euro loss in 2020, while its passenger numbers declined over 70% to 618.000.
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