BELGRADE: Serbia, struggling to cut its rising budget deficit, put the Tanjug state news agency and 10 other local media up for sale yesterday, the national privatisation agency said. The move came after the parliament, dominated by Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic’s conservative Serbian Progressive Party, approved a new law on privatisation which opened the way for the sale.
Potential investors may express interest up to November 3. Under the new law — one of the key reform measures required by the international financial institutions — all state-run firms should be privatised by the end of 2015.
Serbia, which began talks to join the European Union in January, is expected to post a record budget deficit of 8.3 percent of output this year, with economic growth forecast to fall below 1.0 percent, down from 2.5 percent last year.
In mid-August, the privatisation agency had offered for sale 502 loss-making enterprises and the media, including Politika, the oldest political newspaper in the Balkans. Firms which did not attract any bids from investors would be declared bankrupt or sold to cover at least part of their losses.
The Balkan country’s finances have been burdened by up to ¤600m ($753m) per year in subsidies to state-owned companies which should have been shut down more than a decade ago, Finance Minister Dusan Vujovic said earlier.AFP
