CEO of GazpromNeft Serbia NIS company Kirill Kravchenko supposedly has asked Serbian government leaders to shift Deputy Minister of Energy in the Government reshuffle because of upholding higher mining rent. Previously Serbian public recorded fierce fight over the topic of increasing the mining rent to GazpromNeft operations in Serbia.
According to an unnamed source of “Nase newspaper” from Belgrade, NIS is seeking to replace professor Petar Stanojević because he is “a main advocate of increasing mining rent to Gazprom Neft”.
Currently the mineral rent is three percent and because of Stanojević persistence that it is not in the interest of Serbia to exploit cheaply its natural resources (such as extraction of oil and gas), the request for dismissal first was sent to the President Tomislav Nikolić and then to the Deputy Prime Minister Aleksandar Vučić.
For professor of economics, Mlađen Kovačević, this move of Petroleum Industry of Serbia and its russian co-owners (Serbia has 27 percent of shares and Gazprom Neft 57 percent) is not surprising.
“The previous and this government have allowed NIS to act like the owner of the state and not only of company. I warn that if government continues to tolerate the influence of foreign capital into politics, we will become a colony”, said Kovacević.
Political analyst, Dejan Vuk Stanković, says that russian capital all over the world affects the governments, and the serbian government is particularly sensitive because depends on their money in many projects.
“Anyway, we’ll see how the serbian authorities will deal with russian claim but it certainly would not be a good idea that they elect cadres in the Government of Serbia.”
Source: Nase Novine/agencies
