Eurasia Press & News
North Macedonia is planning to put its loss-making, state-owned post office up for sale. But will anyone want to buy it?
Burdened by big debts and stuffed with footsoldiers of political parties, one of North Macedonia’s last big state-owned enterprises, the Post of North Macedonia, will soon be put up for sale.
But while the Social Democrat-led government weighs whether to sell the entire firm, which employs 2,200 people, or seal a so-called Private-Public Partnership, or P3, experts are divided over whether the postal behemoth, in its current state, can attract any suitors at all.
In an apparent effort to sweeten the deal, the government has already, for a sixth time, postponed the deadline for the full de-monopolisation of the postal sector – as sought by the European Union – until 2022.
But some argue that selling the post office now, with its debt, its bloated workforce and its structural flaws may prove far harder than a decade ago, when the country missed the chance to sell to Canada Post, one of the world’s biggest players in postal services.
