08. 06. 2011

Draft Media Strategy should speed up media privatization

If shares are not sold within 18 months, the state will consign them to citizens

Belgrade, June 8, 2011. (Vecernje Novosti) - Some media, now owned by the state, could get new owners by 2013 - namely the Serbian citizens! Draft Media Strategy, to be publicly debated in a few days, has given 18 months to the state to sell its RTV outlets, newspapers and agencies. If it fails to do that by the foreseen deadline, the state will be obliged to yield free shares to citizens.

Veselin Simonovic, Chairman of the Association of Media Managing Board, reminds that under the present law, the state should not take part in media ownership, but it gets away with it. The deadline for privatization of media expired back in 2007.

"The Association's stand is that the state should not have a share in ownership of print media; however, the time left for acquiring new owners should be rationally assessed", Simonovic believes. "This should not be to the detriment of media and the biggest publishers should be consulted."

He adds that it would be fair that Tanjug be privatized too, because of other media outlets, but in a way that this agency is not damaged.

Dragana Milićević-Milutinović, Assistant to the Minister of Culture in charge of the media, says that there are certain objections of the Ministry to the proposed document:

"The stand on complete withdrawal of the state from the media ownership will be formed on the basis of general public interest. We will first hear out the representatives of local media, experts and media industries and have our final say after that."

The period limited to 18 months from the adoption of the Strategy should force the state to hasten the procedure, since, if it does not privatize the media within this period, it will not make a profit and will be obliged to distribute free shares to citizens.

Nino Brajovic from Journalists' Association of Serbia anticipates numerous problems, especially in local media and primarily in Vojvodina, for media outlets established by the minorities' national councils. Slobodan Kremenjak, one of the authors of the Strategy, also believes that the privatization process will not be completed without problems.

"We should learn from mistakes of the hitherto unsuccessful privatizations. It is not disputable that the state should withdraw from the media ownership, because there are no such mechanisms that could ensure that the government does not put pressure on the media it owns", Kremenjak believes. "This does not mean that it would stop helping this sector, but it will be through financing of projects and not media outlets."

Fees for radio in vehicles

The Draft Strategy envisages that the state should ensure mechanisms for charging radio fee for receivers in vehicles. This fee is envisaged by the Law from 2002. RTS had launched the initiative for applying this provision, but the Government rejected this proposal in April this year. RTS estimates that the public service detects 5 million EUR losses, due to violation of this rule.