(SRB) Russians invested 257m EUR in procurement of Serbian companies

Publication: Vibilia News Digest
Provider: INKO Company
Date: June 5, 2007

Although Russian capital has been trying to enter Serbia since 2000, it seems that Serbia has recently started to open the door for the investors from that country. According to the data of the National Bank of Serbia (www.nbs.yu), in the past seven years, somewhat more than 40m USD arrived from Russia, not including capital that entered Serbia through privatization, although, even in that process, Russians were not present that much. Russian companies came out as winners only in four auctions. One of them is auction privatization of Leather Factory in Uzice in 2003, when the company Stepan Gasporjan bought the company, but that contract was broken at the beginning of this year. Second example of, this time, successful privatization is the tender sale of Beopetrol (www.lukoil.co.yu), which was bought in 2003 by Lukoil (www.lukoil.com) for 117m EUR and, on that occasion, Lukoil obliged to invest 85m EUR and implement social program worth about 8m EUR. Russian capital participated in the privatization of company Gosa Fom (www.gosa-fom.co.yu) from Smederevska Palanka. In this case, company Koks joined the consortium of workers in that company and Fom was sold for 7.5m EUR. The freshest example of participation of Russian capital is procurement, this time on stock exchange, of stocks of Belgrade's travel agency Putnik (www.putnik.com) at price of about 40m EUR for the State-owned package of 75% of stocks. Thus, total of 257m EUR of Russian capital entered Serbia through privatization. If the investments of Russia are added on that amount, total value is about 287m EUR. And that is where the list of Russian investments ends.