SABAC, September 13 - Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic and government representatives toured the Macva district in Sabac, where they discussed a plan for the development of Serbia, local communities and municipalities by 2005 - 2010 with economic and community leaders.

"The main purpose of our visit to the Macva district relates to privatization, which will enter its first stage in autumn or winter. Before that, it is necessary to work out a detailed plan. It is important to stress that the money from privatization will be primarily invested in development and will be used to assist the unemployed," Djindjic pointed out, adding that money should be invested "where it can yield profit."

Import of electricity expected again

In Sabac the Serbian Prime Minister announced a meeting of the working group which is to set electricity prices. "In the meeting we must reconcile highly divergent opinions on electricity prices, which range from 1.3 cents to 3 cents per kilowatt hour. If they didn't succeed in convincing me that the price should rise, how they will convince citizens," Djindjic said, adding that he himself "is not completely clear on all the rationales for a rise in prices." He announced that the government intends to equalize prices of the various energy products "so that it won't be important anymore whether one has electrical heating, gas, coal or central heating." "One of our tasks is to find out which 80,000 households spend over one thousand kilowatts and to discover ways of more economical use of electric energy." "At the end of next year we won't import electricity and strain to produce power with damaged facilities," the Prime Minister assessed. This winter, due to ongoing repair at 60% of plants at a cost of some GDM1 billion, electricity will have to be purchased abroad. Djindjic maintained that the government has discovered a way to do so without printing money.

"The goal of privatization is not to supply revenues to the budget, but to attract investments which will boost the economy. Each strategic partner who enters privatization is expected to offer investments and to have a clear social welfare program for each company," pointed out Minister of Economy and Privatization Aleksandar Vlahovic. He added that tender privatization has been launched in 23 companies, and that revenues of GDM1.2 billion are expected by the end of April.

Referring to the second reason for the visit, the Prime Minister said that the Serbian government wants to see for itself which powers should be given back to municipalities by the act of decentralization, so that the new law on local self-government should not be just "a dead letter."

The delegation was also joined by Construction Minister Dragoslav Sumarac, Minister of Trade and Tourism Slobodan Milosavljevic, Agriculture Minister Dragan Veselinov, Minister of Education and Sport Gaso Knezevic, and representatives of the ministry of health and power industry.