22. 04. 2005

MEDIA PRIVATIZATION: HOW AND WHEN?

BELGRADE, April 22, 2005 – The deadline for privatizing public printed media companies expires today. Media corporations will continue to work without interferences until the new public information law is adopted, which should postpone the privatization process for another year. Minister of Culture Dragan Kojadinovic expects that the law, which the government proposed after the initiative by the Independent Journalists Association of Serbia, will be altered and adopted at the next meeting of the Serbian parliament. ”The printed media, who were all founded either by the state of local administrations and are therefore for the most part state-owned, will continue to work until the deadline for privatization is once again extended”, Kojadinovic said. The government confirmed a proposal for the changing of the Public Information Act in mid February, which would push back the privatization deadline for July of next year. By that time, all electronic media companies are expected to be privatized. Representatives of certain media associations noted that the further delay of the privatization process of radio and television stations would also enable the local government to resume control over those media. Kojadinovic said that there would be very few of them ready to buy a pig in a poke, since radio and television stations did not have the licenses for broadcasting, and it still remained unclear when the first tenders would be called, due to recent forming of new Broadcast Council.