January 20 (SeeNews) - Bosnian construction group Sirbegovic expects contracts in Libya to boost its revenue by more than half this year, its president Faruk Sirbegovic said.
Sirbegovic Group’s 2008 revenue was 87 million marka ($58 million/44.5 million euro), up 10% from 2007.
“We expect that this year we will achieve the same revenue on our current markets as last year. On top of that, we expect to have an additional revenue of 25 million euro ($32.4 million) on the Libyan market,” Sirbegovic told SeeNews in a written interview.
He said the group’s profit last year was some 7.0 million marka but gave no details whether the figure pertained to net or gross profit. No comparative figures were available either.
“I can say that I am very pleased with the 2008 results. We have fulfilled all plans and even exceeded them in some segments of operation,” Sirbegovic said.
“We have several bigger contracts whose implementation was transferred to 2009. The biggest contracts are in Bosnia, Serbia, Croatia and particularly Libya,” he added.
Last month, the company won contracts worth 70 million euro to build sports halls, a football stadium and a tourism complex in Libya. It signed earlier this month a 3.5 million marka deal with Bosnia’s biggest engineering firm Energoinvest for the supply and instalment of steel structures for a project in neighbouring Serbia.
Sirbegovic said the steel structures segment had the highest growth in the company operations last year, its volume swelling by 40% from 2007.
THE GLOBAL CRISIS
Sirbegovic said the group has taken a number of steps to mitigate the effects of the global economic crisis.
“The first measure is, above all, keeping the existing clients, that is, contracting sufficient amount of orders from reliable customers. The second is reviewing investment plans within the company, we have simply postponed some investments until better times,” he said.
The group also plans to sell some of its assets which do not contribute to profit-making and reschedule some loans with commercial banks.
“Apart from that, there is a process of reorganisation going on in the company which aims to cut operating costs,” Sirbegovic said.
The Sirbegovic Group (www.sirbegovic.com) is based in the northern town of Gracanica and has regional offices in Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia. Its main activities are design, engineering, construction and transport.
(1 euro = 1.95583 Bosnian marka)