About 5.000 people live in Srebrenica, and before the war in the 1990s, there were 36.000. There is no bakery, one of the two banks is closed, and the bus station has not worked for five years. Last year, 31 small businesses were closed, and 22 were opened. The municipality says that the main cause of the unprofitability of business is the lack of population, that is, the market.
“Srebrenica is sadness, my sadness. Here, this building in front of which we are sitting, in this entrance there are 12 apartments. At this next entrance, there are also 12 apartments. In 1990, all 24 apartments were filled. There were over 50 children. Now, in this entrance, there are five tenants, and in the next entrance there are 6,” says Krsto Stjepanovic, a pensioner.
Krsto has been in Srebrenica since 1975. He used to be an official in, he says, one of the most developed municipalities in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), during the former Yugoslavia. Today, he is a pensioner with only one shop left in the settlement.
“In Srebrenica, there is currently no butcher shop, no bakery, no craftsman, no one, no one to fix the washing machine, no one to fix when white goods break down. But, I heard and I noticed that there are 4 or 5 betting shops,” Krsto adds.
Last year, 22 small businesses were registered in Srebrenica, and 31 were closed. The municipality cited unprofitability as the reason for shutting down business entities.
“Of course, our problem, the general problem of Srebrenica, is the lack of population. As soon as there is no population, there is no basis for someone to open a business and make it sustainable,” Vladan Milanovic, head of the office of the mayor of the Municipality of Srebrenica.
The backbone of Srebrenica’s development should be the Guber Spa Resort, which opened in the middle of the last century and brought Srebrenica about 80.000 overnight stays a year. Unresolved property-legal relations have blocked its revitalization for years. The concession for the facilities was given to one person, and the concession for the use of water was given to another person.
Regarding the unsuccessful attempts to revive Guber Spa Resort after privatization, the vice president of the Republika Srpska (RS) and the former mayor of Srebrenica, Camil Durakovic, previously stated that it was a matter of political blockades, Radio Slobodna Evropa reports.
E.Dz.
