Listing of State Property Expected to Be Completed by July – Value to Be Determined by World Bank

The long-ago started listing of state property should be completed by July. That means that, after nearly 8 decades, Serbia will have, for the first time, a precise register of its property. The value of it all will be determined with the help of the World Bank.

Roads, bridges, railroads, forests, rivers, building land, mines, buildings, hospitals, money, securities… it’s all state property. However, it is not yet known how much of it Serbia has precisely and how much it’s all worth.

The local self-governments were obliged to list everything in their territories by March 31, 2021, but some have not yet done so, they say at the Property Directorate of the Republic of Serbia.

– There is a need for support to the local self-governments precisely in the sense of extending the deadline for them, because the process itself requires the staff to be trained, digitally literate, and those are characteristics that few local self-governments can be said to have – says Dragana Petrovic, the head of the municipal administration of Arilje.

– The data changes as the property of the city changes. As soon as we build a new road, that road becomes an ownership of, says, the City of Krusevac, so I can say that there are over 5,000 listed structures and all those buildings – says Jasmina Palutovic, the mayor of Krusevac.

The unclear ownership status of a building or land makes them dead property which no one can use or invest in. Until it is known who owns what, no annual statement of accounts adopted by companies, for example, can be accurate. Not rarely, the state would discover something it owns through restitution as well.