RIGA - The state could sell its stake in airBaltic this year to Scandinavia's SAS airlines, the company's second shareholder, Transport Minister Ainars Slesers told the Baltic News Service last week.
The minister noted that although the government owns more than 50 percent of airBaltic, it has already lost control of the company. "In fact, we have no control over airBaltic any more, and we will never regain it," he said. He emphasized that since the late 1990s, airBaltic has been managed entirely by SAS.
"I think the only real solution is to negotiate the buy-out of the state-owned stake with SAS," Slesers said.
He declined to specify the price for the 52.6 percent interest, but he did say that airBaltic's planes had been purchased in a leasing deal and did not belong to the company and that the carrier's profit was small and that the industry was developing very rapidly.
SAS currently owns 47.2 percent of airBaltic. In 2003 the airline posted a profit of 1.1 million lats (1.5 million euros) on a turnover of 33.5 million lats. Last year airBaltic carried about 600,000 passengers on flights from Riga to Vilnius and hopes to raise this number to one million in 2005.
