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ROME (Reuters) – Italy approved on Tuesday a decree allowing the Treasury to sell a stake of up to 14% in postal service Poste Italiane, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s office said in a statement.
Under the decree, the state plans to retain more than 50% stake in Poste, the statement said.
The Treasury directly owns a 29.3% stake in the postal service, while another 35% stake is held through state lender Cassa Depositi e Prestiti (CDP).
Rome would pocket more than 2 billion euros ($2.22 billion) from the sale of roughly 14% of Poste, which is currently worth 16.5 billion euros.
The government has been delaying approval of the decree for months, following resistance from ruling and opposition parties as well as trade unions to planned loosening of the state’s grip on key public services.
Initially Meloni’s government had planned to reduce its stake in the postal service to as low as 35%.
Government critics argue that debt interest savings stemming from any sale would be lower than the dividends paid by Poste over time.
The group – a major employer in Italy with over 120,000 workers – plans to pay out 6.5 billion euros in dividends between 2024 and 2028, up from the 3.8 billion euros it distributed over the previous five years.
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(Reporting by Giuseppe Fonte, editing by Cristina Carlevaro and Tomasz Janowski)