(Podgorica, 13 August 2012) – Instead of developing a long term strategy by which the Port of Bar and the Railroad would revive our dead industry, the Government has initiated yet another poorly conceived privatization that will only be used by some friends and business partners of the First Family.
The preliminary tender for the sale of the Bar-based Container Terminal and General Cargo (KTGT) was open until late July. Whether the government’s intention is to once again fill its pockets and those of domestic and foreign tycoons and (as much as possible) the state budget, in order to use up these funds to support the election campaign during the forthcoming elections will be known soon.
As it did dozens of times in the past 20 years, this time too it seems that the Government doesn’t have, nor does it wish to devise a long-term plan and strategy in order to valorize state resources and use them for the development of the society, industry and the improvement of their citizens.
The path chosen by the government in selling the state’s majority share of KTGT shares indicates that it is fully headed towards a repeat of past mistakes.
There is no state in the region that has sold its ports or given foreigners concessions for the use of their port facilities for 30 years, as the Government of Montenegro’s Privatization Council has proposed in the case of the KTGT.
Concession should only be given for technologically backward terminal, while ports are only sold by those governments that lack any development plans.
In the Ports of Ploce, Drac and Valona, millions of euros are being invested, they are building new terminals and port facilities for the unloading and storage of goods (including for both solid and fluid cargos). They are slowly taking over a part of the contracts that the Port of Bar used to take care of, including those contracts that the Government of Montenegro secured by putting its citizens into hundreds of millions of euros of debt with foreign banks.
In this way, according to the information obtained by MANS, the ingots that are produced by the Podgorica Aluminum Combine (KAP) are no longer exported through Bar. Instead, trucks from Podgorica are heading to the Croatian port of Ploce where they are loaded onto boats.
Even though a new deal between the Port of Bar and the Kragujevac-based automaker Zastava was recently announced, there is evidence that the contract will be transfered to Slovenia’s Port of Kopar. Furthermore, this company, which is supposed to be a source of profits for the government, is beset by numerous similar problems. Recently the Port stole a contract with FIAT from its former colleagues in the KTGT (inspite of agreeing that solid cargo, which obviously includes cars, would be handled by the Container Terminal).
All this wouldn’t be possible without the consent of the Government of Montenegro, which through its DPS cadres have destroyed the Port of Bar. Afterwords they divided it into two party / interest based wholes (allegedly in order to more easily privatize them or sell them off).
As a result, the Port of Bar remained under the control of the DPS, while the KTGT was granted to the SDP [the Government’s junior coalition partner]. Following this logic, the Minister of Transportation Andrija Lompar appointed his relative Andrija Radusinovic to head the KTGT.
While experts in this domain are warning that container terminals shouldn’t be sold since the market for global container traffic is only increasing, the Government of Montenegro has decided to bring in foreign investors (this time from Azerbaijan).
In combination with the new owner of Bar’s container terminals is a company, which according to Azeri media is probably backed by that country’s president, whose democratic behaviors are equal to those that have led us in a downward spiral for the past twenty years.
