„I’m seriously worried about Steven Ndegwa. I expected more from the World Bank, which has, several times, proven itself to be an indispensable partner of my country.”
Although Mr. Ndegva does not appear to me as a colonial deputy, his rhetoric has a colonial tone, no matter how hard he tries to show how the World Bank is helping Serbia. As far as I understand, Ndegva is encouraging Serbia to move away from exploration as soon as possible and enter into the mining operations (“Serbia can be a leading supplier of lithium and copper”), to develop a national vision for mining and for the Government to do all this in close association with private sector.
I have the impression that the World Bank has slept through one economic period in Serbia. The largest mining projects in our country – “Chukaru Peki” in Bor and “Jadar” in Loznica are already well advanced in the exploration of copper and lithium deposits and are undoubtedly entering the exploitation phase.
Serbia, in the next phase, needs something else.
It does not need the role of a colony (a leading supplier) from which natural resources and mineral resources will be exported. This is a miserable and insecure status in the international division of labor that Serbia should avoid at all costs. It is miserable because it lowers it to the level of 19th century overseas colonies and is uncertain because it puts Serbia in the position of today’s Russia whose GDP depends most on the movement of commodity prices (volatility) on world stock exchanges.
Serbia needs a step beyond mere ore processing. It needs a national strategy to further its mining potential. And, it can only do so if it has a plan for a higher phase of processing copper and lithium into higher value-added products.
Serbia’s goal should not be to produce lithium and its exports to mobile phone and electric car manufacturers, but to produce batteries of all sizes for energy storage – from small ones for smartphones to larger ones for cars and the largest for cities.
The Chinese company Zidjin is already nearing the opening of a new copper mine in Bor, and the multinational company Rio Tinto is ending research work for a lithium worker, which means the processing plant could be operational in 2021.
The mining strategy Ndegva is talking about is already passe. We need a new strategy – attracting domestic and foreign investors to build processing facilities leaning on the Fourth Industrial Revolution. This is a step Serbia must take to transform itself from a colonial status into an active player in the upcoming world division of labor.
For example, if our neighbor Hungary built a technology park with an experimental runway for the development and testing of self-driving cars, why should Serbia not be the exclusive partner of the world’s largest car manufacturers (Volkswagen, Volvo, Mercedes, Ford, BMW, Toyota, Tesla, Honda). who are racing to take market positions for a new era.
Until not long ago, Serbia was foolishly racing for Volkswagen’s classic car factory and begging the management instead of having President Aleksandar Vucic to take a bag of lithium to Herbert Dis, the head of a company that plans to produce 330,000 electric cars from 2021 and persuade him for Volkswagen to make a battery factory for those cars in Serbia.
Well, I think the World Bank and Steven Ndegwa should be talking about all this with the political leadership of Serbia, not googling colonial mining issues.
If Serbia develops only the mining industry, it remains a country buried in the First Industrial Revolution. It’s not bad either. But, if it wants more than that, Serbia needs to have a strategy for processing ores into higher value-added products, thus jumping into the Fourth Industrial Revolution. It is an opportunity not only for increasing mining’s share of GDP, but for much higher GDP growth, writes Danas.
