[ALBSA-Info] Shaky Future for Trepca Complex

[Kreshnik Bejko]

Shaky future for Kosovo metals

By Fredrik Dahl
Reuters

PRISTINA - Kosovo's once-mighty Trepca mining and smelting complex will have 
a future only if rival claims on it are dropped for the present, a senior 
official of the province's UN-led administration said.

Tim O'Neill, co-head of Kosovo's Department of Trade and Industry, said that 
otherwise it would be impossible to attract private investors to the 
run-down zinc, lead and silver producer which was a major employer in the 
old, socialist Yugoslavia. "If we were to liquidate Trepca in a bankruptcy 
proceeding today there would be no money for any of the claimants, neither 
the ownership claims nor the debt claims," he told Reuters. "If the claims 
are not dropped there is no future for Trepca," he said, adding that a 
Belgrade-registered company says it owns Trepca's assets but this is not 
recognized by the Albanian majority in Kosovo.

In addition, debt demands on the now UN-administered zinc and lead-based 
complex amount to well over $100 million. O'Neill said Trepca, which once 
employed up to 40,000 people and operated 40 major installations in Kosovo 
and elsewhere in Yugoslavia, had a "very limited potential viability," based 
on the most recent analysis which was still incomplete.

He said nowadays there was no production at all at Trepca, the facilities of 
which lie on both sides of Kosovo's ethnic divide, but his office had 
developed 10 potentially viable business concepts for which private 
investors would be sought


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