23. 11. 2005

DELAYED PRIVATISATION OF LOCAL MEDIA

BELGRADE, November 23, 2005 – Tenders for national coverage could begin at the end of this year and might be concluded before the process of privatisation of local media. The deadline for this is end of 2007. “Amendments to the Broadcast Act extended the deadline. There are around hundred local regions of coverage and the Broadcast Agency will have many things to do before the competition”, said Slobodan Djoric, member of the Broadcast Agency Council. Douglas Wake, Deputy Chief of OSCE Mission to Serbia and Montenegro, urged the Belgrade authorities two days ago not to delay the privatisation process any further. Slobodan Djoric said that the Culture and Information Ministry had waited until June to produce the Rules for privatisation of local and regional state-owned radio and television stations, which was seen as a prerequisite for the privatisation. Previous Rules, produced in August last year, contained rather confusing provisions that said that only the media with the proper broadcast licenses could be privatized. Since no media had been issued the license for broadcasting, the new book of rules has been brought. According to Djoric, all broadcast licenses became invalid with the enactment of the Broadcast Act in 2002. “Radio and TV stations can however continue to work until the call for the tender. I hope the Broadcast Council will announce the tender by the end of this year. Before that, the Government must adopt the Broadcast Development Strategy, while the Ministry for Capital Investments should create the frequency plan. Both documents are almost ready. Standards in program, technical and staff requirements will soon be envisaged by the Agency, to go together with the competition for national coverage, which could be called by the end of the year – if these two documents are adopted on time. The Agency will also announce the competition’s conditions, which broadcasters must meet in order to get the license. The state in staff and technical sense is very unsatisfactory; they have been working in precarious conditions and the broadcasters that had invested in their staff, equipment and program are rare”, said Djoric.