Italy is not "selling out cheap" in the government's planned privatization of around 20 billion euros worth of stakes in energy giant Eni, rail company Ferroviedello Stato (FS), Poste Italiane and Monte dei Paschi di Siena (MPS) bank, and it is "light year away from billion-euro gifts",Premier Giorgia Meloni said Wednesday.
"It is not a question of privatizing for the sake of privatising, divesting or selling off, as I have said the approach of this government is light years away from what we have unfortunately seen happen in the past when privatizations were billionaire gifts to some well-connected and lucky entrepreneur , that had nothing to do with the free market but rather to what happened with the Russian oligarchs when the Soviet Union dissolved", she told her first Premier's QuestionTime.
Meloni told the Lower House that the government aims to use privatization as "an instrument of industrial policy".
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