Serbian union protests telecoms privatisation
Around 2,000 workers marched in Belgrade Saturday to demand the government delay the sale of a majority stake in phone and Internet provider Telekom Srbija until the market improves.
Demonstrators want the government to postpone until 2013 the sale of a 51-percent stake in the powerful state-controlled group currently valued at a minimum 1.4 billion euros ($1.97 billion), or even call it off.
“The timing of the sale is not good because of the global economic crisis, while the minimum price is quite low,” Slavoljub Kandic, head of the Telekom union, told the protestors.
The government owns 80 percent of the company and has set a March 21 deadline for binding bids to sell the majority stake and privatise the company, setting its estimated market value at 2.43 billion euros (3.22 billion dollars).
The remaining 20 percent of Telekom Srbija is owned by Greece’s OTE.
The government embarked on a privatisation drive in 2000, aiming to raise funds.
Authorities said in December that seven companies had purchased tender documentation: Deutsche Telekom, France Telecom, Telekom Austria, Mexican America Movil, Russian Weather investments, Turkcell and Russian Vimpelcom.
However union official Miroslav Joksimovic said “only Deutsche Telekom and Turkcell are still interested”.
“The government should also consider keeping its ownership of the Telekom; we can show that we can work and make profit for our state, and not some foreign company,” said one of the protestors, Bojan Racic.
Telekom enjoyed a monopoly in Serbia for fixed lines until last January, when Norwegian telecommunications company Telenor won a licence to develop the Balkan country’s second fixed telephone line network.
Telekom also owns the biggest mobile phone operator MTS in the country of some 7.5 million people.
According to its website, Telekom Srbija earned 13.3 billion dinars (13 million euros) profit in 2009. It has 3.2 million clients in fixed telephony and 5.9 million clients in mobile telephony, which represents 60 percent of the market.
The Serbian company also owns telecommunication operators in Montenegro and Bosnia with an additional 1.8 million clients in mobile and 200,000 users in fixed telephony. It has more than 600,000 Internet subscribers.
The group employs more than 14,100 people, including 9,655 in Serbia.
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