November 24 (SeeNews) - Kosovo will aim to carry out three major privatisations next year, as it faces declining foreign direct investment (FDI), Trade Minister Lutfi Zharku told Reuters on Tuesday.
The impoverished Balkan country, where unemployment exceeds 40%, will also aim to become a full member of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) next year, Reuters reported.
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"There are three main privatisations -- post and telecommunications, the airport and KEK energy," Zharku told Reuters in an interview on the sidelines of a Kosovo investment forum in London.
"We have selected transactional advisers and we believe we will complete these projects from June next year up until the end of next year," Zharku said.
FDI in Kosovo fell 10% on the year in the first nine months of 2009, Zharku said, providing no figures.
The country attracted 360 million euro ($538.6 million) in FDI last year.
EBRD MEMBERSHIP BID
Kosovo expects to get full membership in multilateral lender EBRD by the start of next year, a move that will boost inflows of capital, Reuters reported in a separate news story, quoting central bank Governor Hashim Rexhepi as saying on Tuesday.
"We hope that by the end of this year or the beginning of next year, we will be getting full membership of the EBRD (...) That will help very much with the private sector in Kosovo," Reuters quoted Rexhepi as telling the Kosovo investment forum.
ECONOMIC OUTLOOK ROBUST, INFLATION SEEN TAME
The country has been suffering from falling prices and this year it will have a deflation of 3.0%, Rexhepi was quoted as telling the forum.
"In future years we will have inflation maybe around 1 percent," Rexhepi said.
"We have real growth (this year) above 4 percent, our expectation for the next four years is that we can manage to have a minimum 4.5 percent economic growth."
Zharku told Reuters in the interview that capital expenditure on infrastructure should help Kosovo's growth outlook. The country will spend 470 million euro in this year's budget for capital expenditure, and 400 million euro next year.
Kosovo is likely to finish the year with a budget deficit of 2.0%, and the country, which uses the euro currency, may start to issue domestic debt next year after it has already approved a law on public debt, Rexhepi was quoted as saying. "We approved a law on public debt, technically we will be ready to start in the first half of the year," he said.
Kosovo is negotiating with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a loan of $200 to $300 million and hopes to conclude a deal soon.
Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in 2008 and joined the IMF and the World Bank in June. Since the end of a 1998-99 conflict, Kosovo has received around 3.0 billion euro in aid and is expecting to receive another billion euro from international donors by 2011, Reuters reported.
($ = 0.6684 euro)