25% Of Shipbuilder To Be Sold

Ukraine will sell 25 percent in its shipbuilding company Meridian through a privatization tender in September, the State Property Fund said. The fund said the starting price of the stake was set at eight million hryvnias ($1.47 million). A winning investor would also have to keep the present number of employees and prepare a long-term plan for modernizing the plant. The plant, located in the southern Ukrainian port of Mykolayiv, posted a pre-tax profit of 4.089 million hryvnias in the first quarter of 2000.