Since 2016, Serbia has bought more foreign currency than it sold, for 4.5 billion euros.
Serbian airline Air Serbia has repaid the second and last loan to Etihad Airways Partners BV (EA Partners), which was established by Etihad Airways in 2015, according to ExYuAviation. Air Serbia paid the debt in the amount of 63 million dollars, without any media pomp, at the beginning of June.
Until the publication of this text, Air Serbia did not respond to the attempts of the Nova Ekonomija to confirm or deny this information.
Nova Ekonomija also tried to find out how this debt was repaid, considering that the lender previously rejected Air Serbia’s proposal to reduce the debt, and that the national airline ended last year with a deficit of 77 million euros, despite subsidies.
Air Serbia repaid the first loan in the amount of 52.9 million US dollars last year, although it initially asked to negotiate a debt and postpone payments due to the coronavirus pandemic.
After the request was rejected, the Serbian airline paid off the debt in full.
The second loan came due this summer, and Air Serbia also repaid it in full and on time, according to ExYuAviation.
The only two companies that managed to pay the debt to the fund established to raise funds for Etihad and its partners, besides Air Serbia, are Etihad Airways and Etihad Airport Services. The debt was not repaid by Alitalia, Air Seychelles, and Air Belin.
The two loans in the total amount of 115.9 million dollars, as much as Air Serbia borrowed, were the two largest financial obligations that the company took over from the lenders.
In a letter to the lender from July 2020, Air Serbia requested that the loan be reduced by 89% on the day of payment, out of a total of about 120 million dollars of debt, so that it could continue operating and generate the necessary funds to repay the loan after restarting its business activities, that it could not perform due to the current coronavirus pandemic, the closure of the airport on March 19 and the inability to perform flights.
The board of directors of EA partners concluded that the company’s proposal was unacceptable. Three months later, the Minister of Finance, Sinisa Mali, and Air Serbia announced that Air Serbia had independently provided funds and paid the company of its co-owner, EA partners, 57.6 million dollars in the first installment of a loan of 120 million euros, Nova Ekonomija reports.
