In Serbia, the two Chinese companies are the largest exporters – Zijin, which is majority owned by the Mining and Smelting Basin (RTB) Bor and the HBIS group, which owns the Smederevo ironworks. At the end of the third quarter of this year, the exports of Zijin Bor Copper were 626.9 million euros, and HBIS Group’s 619.6 million euros.
Until the arrival of the HBIS group in 2016, the authorities in Serbia had big headaches due to the losses of the Smederevo ironworks, which now employs more than 5,500 workers and has about 10,000 subcontractors.
The President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić, is talking about that.
“From the takeover until the end of 2021, Zelezara will pay 367 million euros for salaries, while increasing the number of employees by 102. That means that our costs at Zelezara would be the same if we wanted to keep the same number of employees. You know that we didn’t have a “business case”, that we prayed around the world because the Ironworks was returned to us for a dollar, that we couldn’t light a single stove, without any investments, without anything. Only the costs for salaries for us would be this much, and count all other costs that would not be less than 150 million euros. So, what the Republic of Serbia has saved with this investment is more than half a billion euros,” said the President.
RTB is becoming the second largest exporter of copper in Europe, after Poland and the second largest exporter of gold, after Finland. It employs about 5,700 workers whose salaries are around more than 830 euros, while the average salary in Serbia is around 550 euros.
“Zijin has paid 254 million euros for salaries since December 2018, and we owed 1.2 billion euros before their arrival, because that was the obligation of RTB. As far as copper is concerned, we managed to save thanks to their investments of at least 400 million euros in just three years,” Vucic emphasized.
Among the 15 largest exporters in Serbia is the Chinese Zijin Mining, which opened the copper and gold mine Čukaru Peki in the vicinity of Bor in October this year.
It is expected that, when the production of the Chinese Linglong, which is building a car tire factory in Zrenjanin, starts, that company will be one of the largest exporters, Beta reports.
