After the deadline for submitting letters of interest from investors for the privatization of 15 remaining social enterprises, among which 502 are in the so-called "restructuring", expired on September 161, the Privatization Agency received news that those letters expressed interest, mainly, only for agricultural assets that rent land in public, i.e. state ownership, and despite this, are constantly grumbling in losses.
This is another sign, among a number of others already known, that fields, especially those in Vojvodina, can be sold well today - so the question arises as to why the Government of Serbia does not sell its approximately 400.000 hectares of fields and thus does not bring in about three billions of euros. True, the government has already signed certain agreements with Emirati companies on long-term leases of some agricultural assets, but for some reason it will not announce a large auction for the sale of state-owned fields to domestic investors (if the word "domestic" means anything at all in modern times regulated market economies).
Someone will say that the auction of such a large complex of fields would lower the expected price per hectare and that such calculations are at the level of "small Đokica" solutions, and that at the same time there is a danger of the return of "latifundia" to our areas, or that Serbia would put its nutrition in unreliable, "foreign hands", etc. The government can easily prevent such risks, and even abandon the sale if the offered prices fall too much - but let's try something concrete for once in a new context of disposing of real resources. Because reform stories and fairy tales are running out of magic and no one is interested anymore. Of course, there are plenty of excuses for the constant postponement of the deadlines for the privatization of the state's arable land, from which certain interest lobbies benefit more than the twenty thousand employees in agricultural goods in "social property".
First, there is the question of restitution of nationalized arable land. Of course, the auction for the sale of state land would be possible only after the process of returning the nationalized land to the old owners, i.e. their heirs, is completed. There is the problem that the Law on Restitution was passed in the manner of "fraudulent state legislation", during the time of Cvetković's government. Namely, a "catch" was built into that law that the once nationalized fields are now allegedly legally "invisible", because they have undergone several "arrondations" in the last half century - so due to their "invisibility" they can allegedly not be returned to their owners. Everything can be invisible except the fields, so that "catch" can only be considered a mere state fraud. It is true that there are several other laws that practically prevent the restitution of fields, such as regulations on the prohibition of "splitting" of certain plots, etc. Practically, all the laws on agricultural land in Serbia seem to have been made by order of those who have been "plowing other people's land" for decades.
The state, if it only wanted, could relatively quickly return the land claimed by the old owners - and still have about 300.000 hectares left for sale that would not be accompanied by the suspicion that some group of politicians, who at a certain point gained the sympathy of the majority of voters , sells other people's property, to foreigners or locals, it doesn't matter. All budget users would benefit from this, not only certain groups of state-favored agricultural brokers and political sponsors, as well as usually corrupt "organizers" of auctions for leasing state land.
Another problem is that the Directorate for Property of the Republic of Serbia (if it is still called that, after various "transitional" renamings) even after a quarter of a century of existence, has not even managed to compile a list of state property, nor have real estate cadastres managed to list all state real estate, especially those on which companies had the "right to use". The Law on Public Property, also adopted during the time of Cvetković's government, did not enable progress on that front - so it is also one of our "reform laws" that is practically without effective effect. That is, he acts, but in the direction of new confusion, because, for example, it is now unclear whether some part of public property is "decentralized" or not. (Of course not, but that's another topic.)
In a country where ownership relations are unclear, that is, where "real rights" are not clear, either the political or classic criminal mafia usually dominates - and in such countries, real economic reforms really seem impossible.
(New magazine)
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