Belgrade Trade Fair keeps operating as state-owned company

(Belgrade Trade Fair)

The CEO of the Belgrade Trade Fair, Anđelko Trpković, said that, after obviously unsuccessful privatization, the Belgrade Trade Fair would keep operating as state-owned company within the next four or five years, until some new privatization.

- What we are now trying to do, after obviously unsuccessful privatization process, is to make the model for the Belgrade Trade Fair to keep operating successfully. That is also possible without private capital - Trpković told B92.

Trpković said that the fact that the process of privatization of the Belgrade Trade Fair had turned from seeking strategic partner into purchase and sale was the reason for large differences between the price offered by the only bidder on the tender and the price set by the Privatization Agency.

According to his words, the estimate of the value of capital and the company is something that should have been taken care of before that procedure came to the very end.

Trpković said that the Belgrade Trade Fair was sucessful state-owned company and that it would be natural that its owners in the following period were Government of Serbia and City of Belgrade, as well as its former and current employees.

- I believe that the Belgrade Trade Fair has the capabilities to use the funds it can independently create within the next four or five years to work on some investment projects whose size will surely not be the same as it would be if the tender privatization was successful, but they should be sufficient to create some new value, so we can try with the new privatization in four or five years - said Trpković.

He added that the privatization of the Belgrade Trade Fair would be possible as long as that trade fair existed.