Electricity Ministry will take only three state-owned companies to IPO? The Electricity Ministry has decided to reduce the number of new companies it plans to list as part of the state’s program to three from four, sources from the Electricity Holding Company tell Al Borsa. The ministry was initially planning to form four companies: Three to manage the three Siemens combined cycle power plants and one to manage the power grid transmission network.

The ministry plans to list the three power companies managing Siemens power plants in 1Q2019, according to the source. The companies won’t be formed until all three plants have been fully operational by December of this year.

We wonder: Does the IPO pullback suggest the state is cooling on deregulation of the electricity sector? Plans to form power-grid management company have apparently abandoned, the newspaper reports, with sources adding that the grid will continue to be operated by existing ministry companies. The then-Mehleb government suggested in Sharm El Sheikh back in 2015 that the government was slowly getting out of the electricity business and would effectively privatize the grid, turning the state into the regulator of the system, not the operator.