"Privatization deadlines will not be extended"

"Privatization deadlines will not be extended"

Once the legal deadline expires on May 31, the state will have to continue to protect strategic companies, of which there are about twenty, the minister said after a meeting with officials of the Business Registers Agency.

The Ministry of Economy will propose what companies should continue to be protected, and the final decision will be taken by the government, the minister said.

The government is ready to sell companies with negative capital even at minimum prices, but the buyers' obligations will be clearly defined in that case, he said.

It will not be possible to buy a company for one euro, push it into bankruptcy and sell its assets for profit, Sertic said.

He also announced that Privatization Agency employees' salaries will be lowered, and that the Agency will "no longer be able to operate in the way it has been doing so far" and "will know what its job and mandate are."

Privatization Agency Director Ljubomir Subara warned that the privatization of 512 companies with majority state capital will most likely not be completed by the end of the year, which is the legal deadline, and that the main reasons for this were the ambiguous legal provisions, property issues, red tape and the Agency's employees themselves.

Sertic said that there would be "no collapse" on May 31, when the deadline for the protection of companies undergoing restructuring from the collection of their debts expires. After this, he explained, a number of companies will have their accounts unfrozen and "and the problems of those firms will be solved, whether through bankruptcy, privatization or something else."

Sertic said that the state must continue to protect strategic companies, which the Serbian government will define at the proposal of the Ministry of the Economy. Twenty such firms are expected. He added that the state is ready to sell companies with negative capital for EUR 1, but the obligations of the buyers will be defined clearly to prevent them from pushing the firms into bankruptcy or from selling them after privatization.