The Sarajevo Tobacco Factory (FDS) will soon be completely shut down, and in the years behind us, the company’s business has been systematically destroyed, property fragmented, and brands and valuable real estate sold off. But, there are still assets left.
Namely, the former giant of the tobacco industry of the former Yugoslavia is today just one in a series of gloomy stories of dubious privatizations, bad management, and planned destruction, and it was found out through the state of debit and inventory of FDS assets, what is left of assets outside our country, as well as what was sold.
According to the inventory of assets, the FDS had assets in Serbia, Croatia, and Slovenia. A large number of kiosks, which are listed as movable property, were destroyed and, by the decision of the local authorities, probably ended up in a landfill, so this type of real estate is listed as non-refundable.
However, FDS owned many valuable real estates in Belgrade, Zagreb, Ljubljana, Split, Osijek, Novi Sad, Kragujevac, Nis, Zrenjanin, Valjevo, Uzice…
What has not been sold so far is 238 square meters of an office space in Osijek, then 75 square meters of office space in Ljubljana, 149 square meters in Kragujevac, 392 square meters in Zrenjanin, 138 square meters of office space in Nis, and 417 square meters of office building in tobacco factories in that Serbian city.
According to the Federation of BiH (FBiH) Privatization Agency, FDS management sold off assets worth 3.6m BAM.
There are 525 thousand BAM estimated property in Split (office space 111 square meters and two garages), 800 thousand BAMworth of business space in Zagreb (200 square meters), then office space in Novi Sad worth more than a million BAM, in Uzice 190 thousand BAM worth business space, and Valjevo (450.000 BAM), as well as Belgrade (623.000 BAM).
Many believe that the FDS set out on a path of no return fifteen years ago, when politics got its hands deep into business, leading to the sale of equity through dubious deals, culminating in the collapse of businesses and the loss of valuable assets.
During the golden age, around 3.000 workers entered through the gates of the FDS every day, working diligently in three shifts. The factory worked in the most difficult times during the siege of Sarajevo, but despite all that, after 142 years, it will now put the key in the long-rusted lock.
FDS was founded in 1880 and was one of the first four industrial companies in BiH. The most famous and certainly one of the most successful products of this company are Drina cigarettes, also known as Sarajevo Drina.
E.Dz.
Source: Klix.ba
