The Acting Director of the Serbia Electric Power Industry, Aleksandar Obradovic, said that the company could no longer operate the way it was organized. Obradovic said that the EPS reorganization was issue on which decided the state as owner.
“We can speculate in whose interest is that EPS remains thus inefficient, poorly organized according to present founding documents that do not recognize the system as a whole. In such a model, it is possible that the subsidiaries, each for itself, are good and functional, but as a whole it is inefficient. I keep repeating that we have 650 directors, 14 IT Director, 14 financial directors with their services”, Obradovic said.
He pointed out that the state made it clear what it wanted from the Electric Power Industry of Serbia and the Starting point for the restructuring, which have been adopted on November 16th2012that the Government session, it was defined it should be a joint stock company.
“The next step should have been the adoption of new charters, but either of it the company’s managementdoes not decide, but the initiative should take the responsible ministry. Unfortunately, until now very little has been done in this area”, noted Obradovic.
He recalled that the former Minister of Energy Zorana Mihajlovic announced that the company would be organized as a joint stock company by the end of 2013th, and then this deadline was movedup to March 2014th, and until this day the company has not become a public limited company.
Obradovic said that the electricity would become very quickly a market category because the goalwasthe liberalization, adding that it was not good for the state that the largest company in Serbia be inefficiently organized.
Noting that there is a “positive momentum” that the Energy Minister Aleksandar Antic has already taken steps and setthe issue of EPS reorganization high in his agenda, Obradovic said that “it is clear that this is not working” and that the company was organized as a monopoly, but in the meantime, the conditions changed significantly.
“Since last year, all firms at high voltage got the right to choose their supplier and those at medium voltagedecide itthis year, and the households from the next year. We have gone well in the first two phases, but generally we do not readily welcome this kind of change”, concluded the EPSActing Director.