Privatization of state-owned companies in Serbia has gone through different phases under various legal frameworks since the beginning of the 1990s, of which the most effective has been the latest, which followed on from democratic changes in 2000.
Nonetheless, a total of 502 parent companies (together with their subsidiaries) that have been publicly offered by the Privatization Agency have failed to attract buyers. Therefore, a new Privatization law was passed in August 2014 as part of a comprehensive legal reform aiming to resolve the accumulated problems of the Serbian economy, substantially burdened by loss-making state-owned enterprises.
The Privatization law therefore adopts a new approach, introducing new flexible methods and models of privatization which should be more adaptable to the current investment environment and make the entire procedure efficient and transparent. The main characteristics of the final round of privatizations now underway are the following: