The Montenegrin government will buy part of the Port of Bar managed by the Turkish company „Port of Adria“ for ten million euros, and will take over the debts of this company, which amount to 35.6 million euros at the end of September, „Dan“ learned from a source in the Montenegrin executive. These are former container terminals, which were sold ten years ago to a Turkish company for eight million euros.
That will most likely be the epilogue of the negotiations that are being conducted intensively these days. In this way, some companies from Serbia dropped out of the game, which according to unofficial information had a much better offer, but the Turkish partners agreed with the representatives of the Government that it is good that this part of the Port should be returned to the ownership of the state. The Turkish “Global Ports Holding” took over the business rights in AD “Port of Adria” Bar through privatization in 2013 and owns 62.09 percent of the shares. “Port of Adria” is a multipurpose port with an operational coastline of 1,440 meters long, dedicated terminals for container ships, general cargo ships, RO RO ships and cruise ships.
The port covers a total area of 518,790 m2 with nine berths and an annual handling capacity of 750,000 TEU units and six million tons of general cargo.
The entire “Port of Adria” area Is completely under the Free Zone regime. The Prime Minister of Montenegro, Dritan Abazović, announced on Tuesday that representatives of the Government have started negotiations so that the state will regain ownership of the Port of Bar. Abazović said that he and Finance Minister Aleksandar Damjanović started negotiations with the management of the Turkish company “Port of Adria”, which manages part of the Port of Bar, for the state to take over the unified Port of Bar again.
– We are well on our way to complete this transaction and return the important property to state ownership – said Abazović.
He said that “the state is taking over the unified Port of Bar again”, stating that the Government is “correcting the mistakes of its predecessors” with this move.
– The Port of Bar will be a generator of the economic development of Montenegro – said Abazović.
Extraordinary assembly of shareholders of port of Bar on February 24
The extraordinary session of the Assembly of shareholders of port of Bar will be held on February 24 in the premises of the administration building of that company. On the agenda is the adoption of amendments and additions to the Statute of the Port of Bar, as well as the dismissal and election of members of the board of directors. The agenda of the session will include the adoption of the Minutes from the repeated regular session of the Shareholders’ Assembly, held on June 17 last year, Mina Business reported.
The state Is the owner of 77.57 percent of the shares, while the CK-Zbirno custodian account 1 is the owner of 1.04 percent of the shares. Other shareholders have less than one percent of shares.
On several occasions, the government bought out part of the shares of the minority shareholders of Port of Bar, in order to acquire a two-thirds ownership, which enables strategic decisions to be made in the company. Previously, the Government announced its intention to buy shares in the company “Port of Adria” from the Turkish company “Global ports”, and then merge it with the Port of Bar.
By decision of the then authorities, Port of Bar was divided in 2009, and the company Kontejnerski Terminali was separated from it, whose majority package was sold by the Government for eight million euros to a Turkish company, which failed to achieve positive business. At the end of September, “Port of Adria” had a total loss in operations of 35.6 million euros. For nine months of this year, the minus amounted to 456.16 thousand euros.
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