Norway wants to sell its 14.3 per cent stake in beleaguered Scandinavian airline SAS, the country’s Minister of Trade and Industry said.

“We want to sell the stock that the state has in SAS,” Trond Giske said at a presentation of a white paper on Norwegian state-held assets.

He explained the centre-left government would request the permission from Parliament, where it holds a majority, to sell the stock.

Sweden and Denmark, which hold respectively 21.4 and 14.3 per cent in the carrier, have also said they are interested in selling, with Sweden saying early last year it would sell at the “opportune moment.”

Reports have said France-KLM, Lufthansa and British Airways are all interested in SAS, with Lufthansa – already an SAS partner through the Star Alliance of airlines – seen as the most probable buyer.

Lufthansa would not comment on Norway’s announcement, but a spokesman recalled the group’s chief executive had said last month that Lufthansa’s “priority was clearly organic growth”.

Christoph Franz had also said, as the group presented its earnings on March 17, that Lufthansa “had enough to do with the integration and the putting in order of Austrian airlines and BMI”.

SAS has been hard-hit by the rise of low-cost airline Norwegian and by plunging passenger traffic numbers in the wake of the global economic crisis.

Rumours of a sell-off have been circulating since 2008.

Last year, the carrier lost 2.22 billion Swedish kronor (€246 million) but managed to turn a profit in the last quarter, boosted by a hike in traffic and deep cuts in personnel costs.

The company, which launched an ambitious restructuring plan in 2009 entailing nearly 5,000 layoffs, said it expected to still see losses in the first quarter of 2011, but that the full-year should show a profit.