Izar´s reorganization and the lack of any privatization provoke that SEPI records the loss of 979 million Euros in 2004
25 February 2005 |
The state-owned holding company Sociedad Estatal de Participaciones Industriales (SEPI) closed the fiscal year 2004, according to interim figures, with negative results amounting to 979 million Euros, basically due to the reorganization of state-owned shipyards, whose labor-related costs, approximately 1,200 million Euros, appears reflected in the previous results, since during the year 2004 none of its companies has been privatized.
In the fiscal year 2003, during which it made a 1,049 million Euros profit, besides of not including the above mentioned cost, a number of privatizations were carried out and which generated for this Company an income which amounted to over 1,500 million Euros, especially those generated by the privatization of the Empresa Nacional de Autopistas.
SEPI, Izar and the trade unions reached on December last year an agreement for guaranteeing the future of the shipbuilding industry, both for the military and civil branches, offering an answer to the consequences resulting from the decision taken by the European Commission of declaring some of the aids granted in the past to the shipyards as incompatible with Community law and, especially, due to its own financial position. The agreement subscribed envisaged the reorganization of the workforce, with the early retirement of about 4,000 workers, covering the financial cost up to their reaching the legal age for receiving the state retirement benefit, and whose forecasted cost are the above mentioned 1,200 million Euros.