Twenty years ago, in a conversation with a successful businessman from Germany, who educated us in Montenegro about the advantages of doing business in free customs zones, I received a very convincing answer to the question of why we don't have German investors in Montenegro. Roughly: "We know that your people have over a billion dollars of capital (cash) in foreign banks, so they still don't invest in Montenegro, even if not serious sums, so how can we expect the Germans or others who respect international law to do that? and the rules of legal business".
I don't know if Lassie (capital) has returned home in these twenty years or if that billion has quintupled in accounts in Panama, Cyprus, Cayman, Virgin Islands and other islands, and I don't have the keys to "Pandora's Papers" at hand. Something leaked, but the hole was quickly patched. After the lessons of Snowden, Assange, Caruani, they will be less and less curious.
What I know, and everyone who wants to see knows, is that everything that was sold in the past thirty years, which was the property of the state of Montenegro, was sold at a significantly lower, and often many times lower, price than the actual - market price. Sometimes it is literally stolen from the State, under the pretense that the buyer will improve the company's operations, that is, build facilities that will revive Montenegro. The reality is that it is predominantly about losers, with constant losses, at the level of gross salaries of employees, debtors based on taxes and other obligations towards the state and workers, and accumulated losses of tens of millions of euros, individually.
The "customers" should not be blamed for such consequences, or at least they should be blamed, because they did not go beyond our will and consent, nor did they work the way they did without our consent. And it's not like we didn't know.
The circle closes in the way that the State wants to (re)buy what it sold a long time ago - gave away and now in a much worse condition than at the time of sale. Current ones are "Zeljezara" and "Port of Adria", for the purchase of which funds were appropriated in the Rebalancing of the Budget of Montenegro for 2022, without a valid explanation and without a feasibility study that would contain analyzes of the fulfillment of the concluded sales contracts, as well as the legal and economic aspects of the adopted and announced decisions. It is certain that there are no latent reserves in the balance sheets of these companies, and it is likely that there are hidden or "inflated" losses.
The public is not familiar with the details of the contract on the last sale of "Zeljezara", the obligations of the buyer and the seller, but the consequences are obvious on the faces of those workers from the roof of the factory.
Experts in port business and employed workers were against the sale of shares and the granting of a concession, because the whole procedure was non-transparent, the offered price was far below the realistic one, and the only bidder, with little experience in transshipment and storage of goods in ports.
It didn't help! Almost ten years ago, the Parliament of Montenegro decided to sell shares of the "Container Terminal" with a nominal value, and much more, at a tenfold lower price, and to give the "buyer" more than 10.000 m2 of land in the port area, as well as concessions monopolies, financial and other rights that were not the subject of a tender, total value not less than the paid shares.
The details of both contracts (on the sale of shares and the concession) are not available to the public, but the media have repeatedly published what the buyer's obligations are according to the submitted investment program, as well as the promised improvement of the physical and financial parameters of the business. It is a common practice, and probably also a contractual obligation, to submit an annual report on this as well as control by an independent supervision (auditor) or a joint commission.
Such a report has not been made, or at least not presented to the public. Some well-known and responsible people, by the nature of their work and profession, are more informed about the realization of the contract between the seller and the buyer, that is, between the grantor (the State of Montenegro) and the concessionaire, claim that the contracts have not been respected. ie that there are legal conditions (and obligations) for their termination.
Of course, this should and must be checked before any decisions are made by the Government of Montenegro. And now!
What is evident even without special detailed analysis is that the key proclaimed objectives of the privatization and sale of shares of AD "Container terminal and general cargo", which relate to the increase in the volume of transshipment of containers and general cargo, have not been met, and the accumulated (permanent) business losses have exceeded are 30 million euros.
Reasoned initiatives were submitted to the Government of Montenegro (both 42nd and 43rd) to review the fulfillment of contractual obligations by the buyer of shares and the concessionaire. So far no answer.
For some former Barans, to which I myself belong, those agreements on the sale of "Luka", "Izbor", "Koral", "ZIB", "Primorka", "Rumijatrans", which completely destroyed the once powerful bar economy. I know that repairing or mitigating the consequences requires a lot of knowledge and will, and even courage, but someone has to start. Perhaps it would be more beneficial for Montenegro to determine the method of destruction than to determine the method of acquiring the origin of the property. In any case, both the origin of property and the destruction of state property are directly related.
The idea of reintegrating the Port of Bar into a logical, spatial, functional and economic whole is unquestionable and not new. In this way, the consequences of the economic and any other damage caused by the dismemberment and sale of the Port will be mitigated and the conditions for its continuous development will be created. The current owner of the majority package of shares and the concessionaire has no arguments for dictating the conditions, because he is faced with the situation that he has not fulfilled his contractual obligations and that the concluded contracts can probably be terminated. After all, this is also what the International Union of Port Workers, which is well aware of the happenings in "Port of Adria", is asking for.
Bonus video:
