February 22 (SeeNews) - Serbia's economy minister Zeljko Sertic proposed on Monday amendments to the public companies law that will increase the government's control over their management.
Presenting his proposals to a parliamentary committee, Sertic informed that the losses of the publicly owned companies in 2015 are expected to have reached around 35 billion dinars ($313 million/284 million euro).
In 2013, state-owned firms had an aggregated loss of 55 billions dinars, which narrowed to some 40 billion dinars in 2014. Covering company losses and debts by the state took 2.2% of Serbia's GDP in 2014, the minister noted.
According to Sertic, the narrowing of the losses generated by public companies were driven by an increasingly centralised state control, both on national and local level.
The minister's proposal includes abolishing executive boards in the publicly owned companies.
The directors of those enterprises will not be allowed to occupy positions in political parties and they shouldn't have any deputies due to increased misuses of power in the past, Sertic said.
An IMF mission is staying in Belgrade until February 26 to make a fourth review of the 1.2 billion euro ($1.3 billion) stand-by agreement (SBA) with the country, signed in 2015.
Serbian prime minister Aleksandar Vucic discussed reforms at state-owned companies and administration reforms with the head of the IMF mission to Belgrade, James Roaf, at a meeting on Thursday.
Earlier, the IMF announced that Serbia will not get the conclusions of the fourth review until after the upcoming early elections.
(1 euro=123.3 dinars)