Belgrade, Jan 23, 2004 - Officials of the Serbian government, the Serbian Ministry of Economy and Privatisation, the Privatisation Agency and the Anti-Corruption Council met on Friday to review a Council's report on the policy and process of privatisation in the country. A joint statement, issued following a three-hour meeting, says that the report should be regarded only as a warning against possible corruption cases.
Prior to taking any final position on objections to the process of privatisation in the future, the Council will ask the Ministry and the Agency to provide it with all necessary information within the following 15 days, the statement said.
Participants in the meeting also agreed that the Ministry and the Agency must make efforts to implement the Council's recommendations that come within their competence. At the same time, all recommendations outside the Ministry's and the Agency's authority will be forwarded to relevant state bodies, the statement added.
The meeting reviewed the Council's report on the policy and the process of privatisation, with the Ministry and the Agency presenting a document to comment on the Council's findings and recommendations. The Serbian government adopted the document at a session on Thursday, making it the government's official position on the matter. The document was also forwarded to the Council members.
Serbian Minister of Economy and Privatisation Aleksandar Vlahovic said that the Council's report was analysed based on the Council's reliability, expertise and term. Given the nature of the criteria, the document is not based on facts, but rather on uncritically collected information and media allegations, said Vlahovic, concluding that the report is unfounded.
According to Vlahovic, the Council's analysis of the policy and process of privatisation was partly beyond the council's jurisdiction but that it also failed to fulfill its mandate. The analytic basis, Vlahovic explained, was inadequate due to insufficient scope as well as a bias in the choice of facts. He also posed the question of how many firms were included in the analysis, or what was the size of the sample analysed and how many firms should be analysed for the sample to be representative, given that the Council itself made reference to the fact that more than 1,000 firms have been auctioned off and 30 sold through tenders.
Zagorka Golubovic of the Anti-Corruption Council voiced disapproval at Vlahovic's claims that the Council is "incompetent" and criticised the Ministry's statement that "the Council is against private property" and that its report is "damaging to transition."
According to Golubovic, the Council compiled the report with the aim to "initiate a debate on the possibility that there could have been corruption behind the privatisation process." Golubovic said that there are no allegations in the report that corruption actually occurred during the process of privatisation in Serbia, adding that the report only presents examples which should serve as a warning that something might have been wrong and that attention should be paid to it. She said that the Council does not claim that everything in the report is true, because it was compiled based on objections it had received, and explained that the Council did not have resources to check all those information.
