The members of the Supervisory Board of the EPS joint-stock company were appointed two days ago, and in addition to experts from Serbia, there are also three Norwegians in that body. They were presented at the press conference by the Minister of Mining and Energy, Dubravka Đedović, who is the representative of the Government of Serbia in the Assembly of Shareholders of „Elektroprivreda Srbije“. It was announced that a public competition for the general director of EPS will be announced soon.
Speaking about the changes in EPS and the biographies of the new members of the EPS Supervisory Board, Miloš Banjac, a professor at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering in Belgrade, told Euronews Serbia that it is obviously a new international team, and that the biographies of the Norwegian experts are impressive and indisputable.
“Until now, the Supervisory Board of EPS has never functioned in this way. It can be said that it is a bit unusual that we have three foreigners, although these remaining four cannot be said to have joined EPS or with the development of the Serbian electricity industry, but rather they are international experts, only they are of Serbian origin. The biographies of the Norwegian experts are really impressive. By changing the organizational structure of EPS and switching to a joint-stock company, Minister Dubravka Đedović got the right to choose the members of the Supervisory Board, but she also took on a great responsibility because she will she will practically be the only one responsible for the eventual bad business of EPS, if something like that happens,” said Banjac.
The professor stated that for the first time in the Supervisory Board there are no professors from the ETF and the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, institutions and institutes dealing with power engineering.
“I think it would be better if there was some kind of mix in all of that, so that we also hear from this Serbian side, which has been developing the electric power sector until now,” said Banjac.
According to him, it is interesting that there are three economists in the Supervisory Board, only one original power engineer, and also a Norwegian expert from the oil sector.
Banjac says that Norwegian experts are bound by work in their electricity industry, but also states that the Norwegian power sector really has no similarities with the Serbian power sector.
“Their hydro potential is very developed, they draw and use almost 99 percent of their energy from the power sector because they have fast mountain rivers that supply them with electricity. However, it is important to say that Norway was not such a developed and energy-rich country before In the 1960s they found oil and gas in the Barents Sea and since then Norway has expanded its energy. Somewhere around 26 or 27 percent supplies Europe with gas and now they have increased in the age of this energy crisis, and they base their energy experience and energy wealth on that natural gas that was discovered relatively recently in Norway,” said Banjac.
The professor stated that the Norwegians used it very wisely and that we should follow that example.
“The wealth they achieved, and it is measured in thousands of billions of dollars, I think that 1,400 billion dollars is their so-called oil fund, although they call it a pension fund, and it was used in such a way that the government even limited itself to the use of that fund and left for some future generations to use these very large funds. They raised the standard very high in Norway, and they only use the funds modestly for their further needs,” says Banjac.
“The appointment of members of the Supervisory Board is not just a ‘reform on paper’”
Former State Secretary of the Norwegian Prime Minister Oluf Ulset, Head of Euronet’s Belgrade office Vladan Živanović, Master of Economics with experience of working in high positions in several ministries of Norway Per Sanderud, former leading specialist at the World Bank in Washington Dejan were appointed as members of the Supervisory Board of the EPS joint-stock company.
Ostojić, an expert in energy with experience of working in high positions of the Norwegian energy company Statkraft Hilde Baken, managers in several positions in domestic and foreign banks Igor Petković and representative of the EPS workers union Miodrag Ranković.
After the presentation of the members of that body, Minister Đedović stressed that A.D. EPS is entering a new era that enables it to be a strong, modern and successful company that will be a leader and an example for the entire region.
She added that this appointment is not just a “reform on paper”, but that the goal of the Government of Serbia is to implement reforms that will be seen in greater responsibility, depoliticization and results, which are the biggest measure of success.
She assessed that it is clear that things in EPS are seriously changing and that the appointment of new members will be an example of the professionalization of management in the energy sector, not only in Serbia but also in the region.
She said that EPS must be a company that is capable of being the bearer of a large investment cycle in the energy sector, because it needs to build new production capacities and that tens of millions of euros of investments will be invested through that company in the coming period.
“The Government of Serbia has repeated several times that the state remains the owner of EPS and it is the one that defines what it wants from EPS, but also from the new supervisory board, which will partly take over the implementation of our energy strategy,” Đedović said.
The Minister stated that by changing the form of EPS to AD, the Government of Serbia and the Ministry wanted to create preconditions for that energy company to operate competitively on the market and overcome difficulties in functioning.
She emphasized that decisions on compensation have not yet been made and emphasized that money is not the only motive for which the newly appointed members agreed to accept positions in the Supervisory Board because, as she said, it is a great professional challenge.
“We will get large amounts of energy from renewable sources”
Asked what the new composition of the Supervisory Board of EPS could bring and what actions can be expected from them, Banjac said that considering the structure of that body, it can be expected that a lot of work will be done on renewable energy sources.
He stated that the other day, the Government of Serbia adopted a decree according to which, in the next three years, 1 gigawatt of electricity from wind farms and 300 megawatts from renewable energy sources will be auctioned.
“Currently, we have an electric power capacity of 7,700 megawatts, which means we will get large amounts of new renewable energy, although it will come from the private sector, not from EPS. It seems to me that it would have been better for EPS to deal with the production of electricity from renewable sources Following what they are doing and what they were doing in Norway, we will probably also have further development of the hydropower sector, i.e. the construction of new hydropower plants because there are still unused capacities in Serbia for a long time and of course the construction of the now famous reversible hydropower plant Bistrica , which will enable the connection and balancing of the network of all these new renewable energy sources,” said Banjac.
What, he states, would perhaps be a better sequence of moves if the relevant ministry adopted a new strategy for the development of Serbia’s energy sector until 2050, because, he adds, then we would have a clearer plan of what the ministry actually wants to do with the power sector and with other sectors.
He reminded of another obligation that we are late with, which is the integrated national energy-climate plan until 2030, which, he adds, is an obligation towards the Energy Community.
“In those documents, we would clearly define our future intentions related to more renewable sources, energy efficiency and the complete development of electricity and other energy sectors,” says Banjac.
“Bad managers managed EPS”
When asked what is the state of the EPS, considering the EPS report that the business was excellent, that the profit was 34.5 billion dinars and that the results were better than planned, while Minister Đedović said that the information was completely opposite, Banjac said that it is ungrateful for him to comment on both reports and to be able to say that both are right.
Banjac said that the acting director of EPS, Miroslav Tomašević, presented the data that electricity production has increased, that the system is stabilized, that the hydrological situation is in our favor and that there are enough coal reserves at the landfills.
“Of course, they went into the overhaul of thermal energy facilities earlier than they should have, which is logical from a technical point of view because we have enough hydro potential at the moment. In contrast to that, Minister Đedović is talking about the fact that the plan was bigger and was not fulfilled Both sides are in the right, it depends on how you look at the situation,” says Banjac.
The professor said that the fact that two years ago we had a collapse of the electric power system was only due to bad management and bad managers in lower positions, and not because of whether it was a public company or a joint stock company.
“Simply, there were bad managers who managed EPS,” says Banjac.
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