ROME (Reuters) – Italian Infrastructure and Transport Minister Matteo Salvini said on Tuesday he was not necessarily against selling stakes in state-controlled railways group Ferrovie dello Stato, but at the moment, no such plans are on the table.
On Monday Salvini, who is also deputy prime minister, was quoted as saying that he was against selling a stake in the company.
But in comments at the Foreign Press Association in Rome, he said his ‘no’ had referred to the absence of any current sale plans for Ferrovie dello Stato (FS).
“I am not a priori against”, he said.
“If you ask me if this morning, this Tuesday morning, if I have on my desk a plan to privatise FS, parts of FS, the high-speed services, the network, (the answer is) no,” Salvini said.
“If there were an (asset sale) plan that could bring me added value, investments, money … I would gladly read it,” he added.
The Italian government has set itself the goal of raising some 20 billion euros ($21.91 billion) between 2024 and 2026 through privatisations to help trim public debt, the euro area’s second-highest in proportion to gross domestic product (GDP).
Economy Minister Giancarlo Giorgetti, who belongs to Salvini’s League party, said in October that state-owned railways and motorway networks were among the state assets that could be partly sold.
($1 = 0.9128 euros)
(Reporting by Alvise Armellini, writing by Gianluca Semeraro; editing by Gavin Jones)
