* Polish treasury sells 8 million shrs for 135 zlotys each
* Share price confirms earlier Reuters report
* Poland retains 1 percent stake
* Shares sold worth some 1.08 bln zlotys ($379 million)
* Stock closes at 133 zlotys after late session retreat (Releads with confirmation closing share price)
By Maciej Onoszko and Adrian Krajewski
WARSAW, Aug 5 (Reuters) - Poland sold a 3 percent stake in the country's No. 2 bank Pekao for 1.08 billion zlotys ($379 million) on Wednesday as it collects funds to plug a budget gap, but it failed to sell its entire holding due to a high price.
Earlier on Wednesday, Polish fund managers and a source close to the transaction told Reuters the treasury ministry was selling shares in block deals at 135 zlotys, a price confirmed by ministry officials after the session.
"We sold nearly eight million shares for 135 zlotys each," Deputy Treasury Minister Adam Leszkiewicz told Reuters.
The ministry, which held 10.4 million shares in Pekao left over from its privatisation, sold nearly 8 million shares after launching a bookbuilding process late on Tuesday.
Shares in Pekao, a unit of Italy's UniCredit, traded touch above 135 zlotys for most of the session when the government was selling its stake.
But they closed 3.2 percent lower at 133.10 zlotys, in line with Warsaw's main index that retreated with other world markets after weak U.S. economic data.
Fund managers told Reuters that Poland would have sold its entire stake had the treasury set the price closer to 130 zlotys.
The stock ended last week at 144 zlotys, but fell 5 percent on talk of an imminent sale of state shares, despite better than expected second-quarter results on Tuesday.
Citigroup Polish unit Bank Handlowy was managing the bookbuilding process.
Last year, Poland failed to sell its stake to Italy's UniCredit, which already holds 59 percent of Pekao.
Poland's centre-right government also plans to sell several small stakes left over from privatisations of a handful of listed companies, led by phone operator TPSA.
The sale of Poland's holding in the France Telecom unit could yield some $300 million at current market prices.
But a ministry spokesman backed off from earlier comments that all the stakes would be sold this year, saying that the deadline for the sell-offs is the end of 2010.
He also added that the government would not sell any of its remaining Pekao stake at less than 135 zlotys per share.
The treasury ministry aims to collect 36.7 billion zlotys from the sale of state assets by the end of next year to relieve the pressure on the state budget, which it forecasts to have a 27 billion zlotys shortfall in 2009.
Analysts expect the budget gap to be closer to 32 billion zlotys next year. ($1=2.851 Zloty) (Additional reporting by Daisy Ku in London and Piotr Bujnicki and Agnieszka Barteczko in Warsaw; writing by Chris Borowski, editing by Will Waterman and Hans Peters)