BELGRADE: Serbia put 502 loss-making state-owned companies and media outlets on sale in a dramatic bid to cut the country’s rising budget deficit.
The giant copper mine at Bor, one of the biggest in Europe, is among the businesses that the state privatisation agency wants bids for by September 14.
Among the companies offered for sale on its website are fertiliser producer HIP Azotara, pharmaceutical giant Galenika, furniture maker Simpo and agricultural group PKB, all stalwarts of the economy until the fall of communism in the 1990s.
A number of media outletsand dozens of local radio and TV stations are also going under the hammer. In hopes of speeding up the sales, the agency said it had prepared plans for a number of different models of privatisation.
The Economy Ministry will decide on potential bidders after the deadline expires and later call separate tenders, the agency said.
The companies that cannot be sold will either be left to go bankrupt or their property will be sold off in order to cover at least part of their losses. Serbia’s finances have been burdened by up to ¤600m ($815m) per year in subsidies to state-owned companies that should have been shut down more than a decade ago, Finance Minister Dusan Vujovic said.
The move came after the parliament, dominated by the conservative Serbian Progressive Party of Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic, voted a new law on privatisation that paved the way for the sale.
According to the law — one of the key reform measures required by the international financial institutions — all companies still owned by the state should be privatised by the end of 2015.
Serbia, which began negotiations to join the European Union in January, is expected to post a record budget deficit of 8.3 percent of output this year, with growth forecast to fall below 1.0 percent.
AFP
