Serbia: GazpromNeft Oil industry CEO announces new investments, incomes to decrease

Published on 5. November 2013., News Serbia Energy

General Manager of Oil Industry of Serbia (NIS) Kirill Kravchenko said that the company will increase investment in the coming year. However, he said, it will be difficult to save the results so far in this economic circumstances.

“What I can say is that investments will be higher. Regarding income, in these economic circumstances, it will be very hard to keep these results. However we will do whatever it takes to do that”, said Kravchenko visiting in the News RTS.

NIS has achieved the same revenue as last – 31.7 billion dinars in the first nine months of this year.

At the same time, despite the crisis, the income of NIS in the budget increased by almost 40 percent, making the oil industry pays more taxes than the 10 largest state-owned companies together.

Kravchenko said that NIS will fulfill all obligations to the budget of Serbia, and only tax liability this year will be twice higher than in 2009. He pointed out that NIS, along with the tobacco industry, proposed a package of measures which includes excise control and product quality control in the field, as well as better inspection of work of other companies.

“The state is ready to support this. Why? That’s because only the introduction of these measures could bring to the state more than 300 MEUR per year just from two industries”, explained Kravchenko.

He pointed out that this does not mean just ejection of poor quality fuel and less concern of drivers for their engines, but also increase revenue for the state budget, which significantly reduces the risk of introducing unpopular measures from the government.

Talking about the price of oil products, Kravchenko said that there are factors that NIS can not influence, such as exchange rate and oil prices.

“This year we export European quality fuel, not only in Serbia, but also in the environment. Our primary role is to propose the lowest prices in comparison with the competition for European quality”, said Kravchenko.

General Manager NIS does not expect large fluctuations in the price of fuel by the end of the year, given that the price of oil and the dinar is more or less stable.

“I see that we have a lower average cost of products in comparison with the countries of the region. And our main role is to maintain price growth at a lower average level,” said Kravchenko.

Source; Serbia Energy