For days now, Montenegro has been heatedly discussing the Prime Minister's Agreement with the UAE.
The Agreement contains provisions that allow the “entity” chosen by the other party (the UAE) to choose a location in Montenegro that it likes and build, among other things, villas and apartments for the market. It is logical that it should choose that first. The state undertakes to provide it with the purchase of private land (based on declaring the area on which it is building to be of public interest), to build infrastructure to the location and to change plans that are “business barriers”.
The agreement is criticized for being undemocratic, for allowing for concreting and environmental degradation, etc., which is mostly correct and sufficiently argued. However, this can be overcome with the understanding and goodwill of the investor. The investor (entity) has no reason not to accept the demands of environmentalists and others because by selling the apartments he can earn many times more than the initial investment. He would have no problem setting aside a portion for environmental interventions, or even donations.
The essence of the problem with the Agreement is that, based on it, an investor can, in the most attractive locations of the Montenegrin coast and mountains, build apartments for the market, and at more favorable conditions than a Montenegrin householder builds a house for his family. The Constitution states that Montenegro is a social and ecological state!
Apartments for the market are not investments in economic development, but in the rapid turnover of capital, the profit of which grows more based on the attractiveness of the location than on investor investments - the turnover is rapid and multiple.
During a time of general crisis, it could be believed that by trading in space we would compensate for the absence of economic activity and that by selling land and apartments we would compensate for imports, primarily food.
Although the financial gain of the state and the benefit of that business for society as a whole are questionable when building a settlement with apartments for the market, which should be decisive, some of the completed settlements have been beneficial to the wider community. The profit of the state is questionable with the permanent inability to use the space for any other purpose, so it is also important which space is ceded to the investor.
Today, for an apartment in an exclusive neighborhood, the annual maintenance of the entrance costs more than the property tax, and this tax finances the entire public service that supplies, at least in part, the owners or users of those apartments.
The Agreement states that the initial rules will not be changed for 90-99 years. By the way, in decent societies, concessions and lease-use agreements that are longer than 30 years are considered colonial.
So, in the Agreement, everything is arranged so that the "entity" - the chosen investor, can extract maximum profit, and what about us? We would have beautiful settlements!
Both hotels and market apartments are buildings that can be beautiful or ugly; but the former contribute to development and the latter limit it. From the aspect of development and public interest, commercial buildings (hotels) and market apartments stand in relation to each other like healthy tissue to a tumor.
After 40 years of dynamic "development" of the "real estate business" in Montenegro, experts, politicians, and businessmen should understand and know what this work means and that it is wasting the development potential of the area!
It is incomprehensible, and may even be disastrous, that the people's representatives and the elected officials of Montenegro do not believe in themselves and the society they govern that we can build and sell villas and apartments for the market in locations in one of the most beautiful parts of the Mediterranean, but for that they are looking for foreign investors who even relieve the host of the obligations that the family has when building a house. How do they think they can govern this society with such conviction? Why do they even want to govern this country?
For all those who will vote for this Agreement with the belief that it is beneficial for Montenegro, and that the other side also considers it to be so; to have a clear conscience, before voting, ask the Prime Minister to sign a reciprocal Agreement with the UAE. So that the "entities" we choose can build in Dubai in the same way as theirs here.
That's fair. It would practically mean exchanging attractive locations in the Mediterranean for a piece of the vast desert. And apartments - villas - sell well there.
Since I do not believe that you (we - Montenegro) have the political capacity to condition the acceptance of the Agreement by signing a reciprocal one, then at least imagine what the reaction of the partners on the other side would be to such an offer. Someone will say that they do not need investors - and we: nevertheless, we offer them an extraordinary space.
Now, you who decide on long-term important matters: think about where we are between neocolonial and developed society?! How and why did we get here?
Leave a chance for at least someone behind us to try to make this country rich and happy. Three generations fit into 99 years!
If you adopt such an Agreement, don't be surprised if someone accuses you tomorrow of destroying their future.
MOST IMPORTANT: Investments in hotels and tourist facilities should be supported to the maximum extent possible, and the construction of apartments and villas for the market should be allowed only to the extent that is unavoidable!
When a person sees how we organize and use the space that is one of the most beautiful parts of the Mediterranean, it is no wonder, especially if they are entrepreneurs, that they come up with the idea of offering us a development model of "I eat, you eat". I hope that such a model is no longer applied - that is, that these societies have matured enough that such a model is no longer acceptable to them!?
"I eat - you eat" is the way in which the re-implantation of coffee and cocoa in former colonies was organized, and it consists in a businessman-entrepreneur who knows the market for the products well and has the ability to market them, coming among the native population (natives), organizing them and helping them build their own settlement and homesteads where they grow food for themselves, with the obligation to simultaneously (as a priority) plant, grow and harvest coffee and cocoa plantations that, normally, are sold by the entrepreneur-businessman. So, they have a place to live and something to eat, they wouldn't know what to do with the plantation anyway, and he presents the sale of the products as: "Here, I have to eat something too". (This association is an appeal to the conscience of those who make decisions)
The author is a spatial planner; STEGA - Editorial Office for Spatial Management Policy
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