Singapore Temasek to sell power firm PowerSeraya

SINGAPORE, Oct. 7 (Xinhua) -- Singapore state investment firm Temasek Holdings launched Tuesday the sale of its electricity generator PowerSeraya, which generates about 28 percent of the city-state's electricity.

PowerSeraya will be the last of three power generator that Temasek is selling under its plan announced in July last year to divest all of its wholly-owned power generation companies in Singapore by the end of next year, in a bid to liberalize the city-state's power-generating sector.

PowerSeraya has a capacity of 3,100 megawatts (MW) now, and this will rise to 3,900 MW by 2010 when a new 800 MW capacity natural gas-fired plant completes.

For the year ended March 31, 2008, PowerSeraya had revenues of 2.79 billion Singapore dollars (1.90 billion U.S. dollars) and earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization of 355 million Singapore dollars.

In a statement, Temasek's director of investment Gwendel Tung said, PowerSeraya "has attracted strong indications of interest from a number of potential bidders."

"As with the sale of the other two gencos (generation companies), the sale of PowerSeraya will be subject to acceptable price and commercial terms," he added.

Temasek last month sold Senoko Power generating company to a consortium led by Japanese Marubeni Corporation for 3.65 billion Singapore dollars.