Deputy Prime Minister of Serbia and Minister of Trade, Tourism, and Telecommunications Rasim Ljajić has stated early today that the process of reconstruction of Agrokor is heading in a good direction, and expressed his hope that it will be successfully finalised by the end of the year.

After the regional ministerial meeting about the issues related to the functioning of Agrokor, held in Bled, Mr Lajić has estimated that a much had been already done, and that we had “reasons to be more optimistic than we used to be five or six months ago”.

Minister has said that all Serbian companies within Agrokor employing 11 thousand people and operating with almost two thousand suppliers, have stable business activities, and expressed his hope that it will continue that way in the next period as well.

Mr Ljajić has said that Serbia certainly is interested in finalising this process as soon as possible, and to make it a success, adding that today’s meeting is a good model for tackling other open issues between our countries.

“I hope this trend will keep on in the next period and that in autumn when this process is finalised, we will again have a meeting in the same composition, when we will have some transitional time to so how far we have gone in the process of restructuring Agrokor”, he said.

Asked about his opinion about the interest of Serbian companies in purchasing Agrokor’s firms in Serbia, Minister has that the government’s task is not to get involved in the ownership relations of a private company.

Speaking of intentions of new concern owners, he said that he did not believe that Russian bank, nor any American funds will decide to deal with this activity in the long run.

“But it is quite certain that they will have their interest to increase the value of the company so that they could ask for more money on the market in the future”, Mr Ljajić has stressed.

Deputy Prime Minister of Croatia and Minister of Economy Martina Dalić has said that she informed her colleagues from the region on recent development in the process of extraordinary management in Croatia and its results, as well as on achieved provisional agreement.

“I have informed the colleagues that with the provisional agreement among the creditors a huge step forward was made, and conditions have been made for reaching the final agreement”, says Ms Dalić.

Extraordinary management in the concern, as she has added, should cease to exist within the time period defined by the law, which is by July 10.

“Therefore, at this point we expect a more intensive work of the extraordinary management on drafting the legal texts of the agreements and tackling of all other details so that by July 10 we could pass the text of the agreement”, says she.

Minister of Economy of Slovenia Zdravko Počivalšek has said that for Slovenia the most important thing is to create conditions for reconstruction of Merkator, and that we cannot speculate on the intentions of new owners, i.e. banks except from the fact that banks generally are not interested in becoming the owners.

The meeting was attended by Deputy President of Ministerial Council and Minister of Foreign Trade and Economic Relations of Bosnia and Herzegovina Mirko Šarović, and a representative of the Ministry of Economy of Montenegro Biljana Jakić.