Czechs Turn Out to Buy into Industry : Privatization: Stock in 1,849 state companies is transferred. More than 80% of adult citizens now own shares.

The Czech Republic on Friday ended a privatization program with nearly all available shares sold. About a third of the country’s industry has been transferred to about 6 million investors.

The program, unprecedented in the former Soviet bloc, was undertaken to break up state monopolies and give financially troubled companies new, private management.

Although only Czech citizens and investment funds were eligible to buy, the move also opened doors to foreign capital.

Shares from the coupon privatization are now routinely traded on the Prague Stock Exchange and the computerized RM System.

“Free entry and direct access were the main priorities,” Dusan Triska, chief architect of the program, said in an interview.

When the program began three years ago, every adult Czech was entitled to buy government-issued coupons for a token fee of 1,000 crowns ($35). The coupons were used either to bid individually or through investment funds on shares in 1,849 state-owned companies.

On Friday, the government declared an end to the bidding after nearly all shares of the privatized companies were sold. More than 80% of the adult population became shareholders.

The same scheme was used on a lesser scale in Slovakia before the peaceful breakup of the former Czechoslovak federation, and it is expected to be continued there next year.

A news agency said Friday that Ukrainians whose savings were devalued by inflation would get certificates allowing them to buy shares in privatized state companies.

Czech critics say the ambitious project did not live up to all expectations.

Most of the coupon-based shares belong to several large investment funds closely connected to big banks, which have been reluctant to drive the indebted companies they own into restructuring or bankruptcy.