----- Original Message ----- From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; Bob Petrovich <bojanp@hom Sent: Thursday, February 22, 2001 12:09 PM Subject: Counter-Revolution, Privatization, Chossudovsky, Yarker, and the Fake US Left Serbia eyes new privatisation law by April by Beti Bilandzic Reuters Jan 28, 2001 BELGRADE, - Serbia's new privatisation minister said he was preparing new legislation allowing the use of different models in the planned sell-off of some 7,000 state or socially-owned firms in the impoverished Balkan state. Speaking a few days after Serbia's new reformist government took office, Aleksandar Vlahovic said he expected the law to be ready by April. He said it would largely abandon the privatisation model used by Slobodan Milosevic's ousted authorities. "The new privatisation law will certainly mean abandoning the insider privatisation concept, but not fully, it will be a combination of different approaches and models," Vlahovic told reporters on Saturday evening. Under the existing ownership transformation law, passed by Milosevic's government in 1997, up to 60 percent of a company's capital is given to its workers and pensioners in the form of shares and the rest sold to investors in exchange for cash. Vlahovic said this way of selling state firms did not allow for growth and development because it was unclear who the majority owner was and who ran the company, saying workers would be better off with a successful firm than with worthless shares. "The message is that it is better to live and work in an economy that is growing and developing, it is better to be a well-paid worker than a poor shareholder," he said. Vlahovic was speaking at the end of a two-day seminar to discuss privatisation experience in other ex-communist European countries, attended by representatives of the World Bank and experts from Poland, Hungary, Estonia and Slovenia. Their experiences will be valuable when Yugoslavia draws up its own privatisation concept, Vlahovic said. He said that out of some 7,000 Serb companies to be privatised, 631 had started the process with an estimated book value of $1 billion. Their real value could only be determined by the market, he added. There would be no revisions of privatisations conducted so far, only if there had been flagrant violations of the law. He said priorities were to bring in new strategic partners and create an environment for the development of small businesses, seen as crucial to help the Serbian economy recover after a decade of conflict and economic sanctions. "We consider that with the development of small and medium-sized businesses we can syphon off the surplus workforce and change the structure of the economy," he said. There would be no deadline for privatisation as some companies could start the process immediately and others, such as large energy companies, needed more time. "I expect that four years from now socially-owned capital will be completely eliminated, we will have private and state ownership and we will start privatisation of big systems but it will still be under way in some cases," he said. 11:40 01-28-01
