MANS submitted to the Port Authority today comments on the draft concession act and contract for commercial use of the Port of Bar. MANS has also requested that these documents be withdrawn from the public hearing, because they contain a series of controversial and illegal provisions to the detriment of the state of Montenegro and its economy, as they favor the Polish company OT Logistics SA, as a potential buyer of the Port of Bar.
The public hearing, conducted by the Port Authority, was expressly released on 23 March this year and ends today, because the government is apparently in a hurry to sell the Port of Bar to the Polish customer, although the company can still make a profitable business. Moreover, its employees, as well as a significant part of the Montenegrin public, oppose the sales.
By having implemented the concession procedure, the Port Authority has directly violated the Law on Ports, since the draft concession act does not contain any assessment of the financial and technical feasibility of port services. A sum of €15 million is mentioned as the investment, but the annexes to the concession contract, which should show what exactly these investments are, are kept hidden from the public.
This is especially important given that the investments include investments in port infrastructure, which remains the property of the state, and investment in port facilities and installations which, after the expiry of the concession, will remain the property of the Poles. According to the current draft of the contract, the new owner has the right to remove them, and if that is not possible, then the state would acquire the ownership by paying the Poles.
Therefore, the government’s argument that the investment program for the Port of Bar is €15 million is highly questionable and it is not clear what the program refers to, because the real investment is only what would be invested in infrastructure, while by investing in port facilities and installations, the Polish buyer would actually invest in itself.
We recall that the government constructed a similar plot a few years ago with the Turkish buyer of the Container terminal and general cargo. The government loudly announced an investment of €13.5 million, but it soon became clear that investments in infrastructure, in what the state gets to keep, is merely around two million, while everything else entailed the purchase of equipment that would remain the property of the Turkish company.
The draft concession contract for the Port of Bar contains other harmful provisions that favor the potential buyer, which is guaranteed that there will not be changes of planning documents for the area where that activity is to take place. It is also provided that any delay in the issuance of permits and licenses will lead to an extension of the deadlines in the investment plan, while even the failure to carry out 25 percent of the investment will not result in the termination of the contract.
Potential concessionaire is given the opportunity to transfer all the rights and obligations under the concession contract or a part thereof to a third party. The model of calculation of variable compensation that is defined not by the volume of the cargo handled, but by the revenue that the buyer shows in the financial statements, is also very suspicious. Since it is a common practice to fiddle with financial data, it is not clear how the state will control this aspect.
The draft concession act and contract enable the future buyer not only to transship dry and bulk cargo, which is the current activity of the Port of Bar, but from the end of December 2023, it can engage in transshipment of general cargo and containers, is by that time the exclusive right of the Port of Adria, or the former company Container terminal and General cargo, which the government sold to the Turkish Global Ports Holding from Istanbul a few years ago.
In addition, the future buyer is given the option of reloading dangerous goods, the storage of all types of cargo in indoor and outdoor port warehouses, as well as freight forwarding and shipment of goods, which is now mainly managed by the private sector in the municipality of Bar.
Finally, the way the government conducts the procedure of selling its stake in the Port of Bar, which was declared secret two years ago, and the speed at which it is now preparing the concession for the potential buyer, does not leave much room for the doubt that the a new pernicious privatization is taking place. Neither the employees nor the state will benefit much from such a business, as this only means continuing the shameless sell-off of the state resources.
MANS Investigation Center
Coordinator Ines Mrdovic
