Contract on sale of Pančevo-based "Azotara" cancelled

The Privatization Agency of Serbia has announced today (January 9, 2009) that it cancelled the sales contract with the new owner of "Azotara" in Pančevo, that is, the consortium of two Lithuanian companies - "Arvi" and "Sanitex" – and Serbian company "Univerzal holding".

The Head of the Agency’s Info service, Dušan Belanović, said to Beta agency that the contract had been cancelled because the new owner had not used the property in legal way, that is, the owner had sold the company’s unit "Karbamid" for 32.5m EUR, which was against the contract terms.

As he explained, the new owners did not pay the first installment of the fine for sale of that unit on time, and the deadline was the end of the last year.

He said that Azotara would be taken over by the Share Fund and he expressed expectation that the future steps would be soon defined in association with the Ministry of Economy.

The President of the Independent trade union of Azotara, Milan Ivović, pointed out that they had been informed that the Agency had cancelled the contract and that the news had been well-received by the workers.

- The next steps of workers and trade union of Azotara will be to fight for the company’s survival and find the right way for the commencement of production – said Ivović.