Montenegro's sales of publishing house, spa centre and cigarette factory fail.

By bne IntelliNews March 19, 2013
Montenegro's Privatisation Council declared on Monday, March 18, the tenders for the sale of publishing house Pobjeda, healthcare and spa centre Simo Milosevic and cigarette maker Novi Dunavski Kombinat unsuccessful as no bidder met the tender requirements. The announcement was made by Council's secretary Aleksandar Ticic and a video recording with his speech was posted on the government's website. He said that the government formed a month ago a working group to review the privatisations in the sphere of tourism. As a result of the review, the Council has decided to unilaterally cancel the contracts for the privatisation of hotel Planinka, hotel Jezero and hotel As as the investors failed to meet their contract obligations. The government holds an 86% share stake in Pobjeda, which it wants to sell but its privatisation attempts have so far been unsuccessful. The latest auction took place in Sep 2011, when Bosnian publishing house Avaz offered initially one euro for the stake in Pobjeda and EUR 2.1mn for investment and following negotiations improved the offer, proposing EUR 100,000 for the share stake and EUR 15mn for the investment programme. Avaz, however, withdrew from the sale later on. Pobjeda publishes daily newspaper Pobjeda, daily sports newspaper Arena and the Sunday edition of Koha Javore in Albanian. In the sale of its 56.5% stake in healthcare and spa centre Simo Milosevic, Montenegro received last year two bids filed by Serbia's MK Group and French cosmetics company Vichy. Obviously the tender commission turned down the offers after evaluating them. Simo Milosevic has been offered for sale already a few times but without success. In February 2013, a consortium led by Montenegrin construction firm Kroling filed a bid to build the new plant of cigarette maker Novi Duvanski Kombinat, asking EUR 12.85mn - as part of the tender for a partial privatisation or recapitalisation of Novi Duvanski Kombinat via a construction of new plant. The government owns 68.78% of Novi Dunavski Kombinat, while the remainder belongs to the capital city Podgorica. The main activity of the company is purchase, production and marketing of tobacco and tobacco products.

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