In Turkey, the government has set the scheduled date for the privatization of the national lottery to January 9, 2009 in the wake of strong bidding from numerous international parties. It is set to involve a re-branding exercise alongside the appointment of a regulatory authority.

The final privatization is set to involve a re-branding exercise alongside the appointment of a regulatory authority with firms such as Greek firms OPAP and Intralot interested in taking over the national lottery. Others that could be running the service come next year include Turkey’s Koc Group, Austrian Lotteries, American firm Scientific Games, Britain’s Camelot and GTech, which is a subsidiary of Itlay’s Lottomatica.

The log-running privatisation is the latest in a sell-off programme the nation is implementing in order to generate foreign revenues needed to ease a bloated current account deficit.