Parliament passes economic, media bills

BELGRADE - The Serbian parliament passed three media bills and a set of economic bills on Saturday.

It adopted the privatisation bill and the bills amending the bankruptcy law and the law on the procedure of registering with the Serbian Business Registers Agency, as well as the bills on public information, electronic media and public media services.

The set of media bills, adopted after 11 years, is to ensure the provision of timely, truthful, full and unbiased information, and will also see the state withdraw from ownership in media companies by mid-2015.

The new privatisation law and the amended bankruptcy law should break the deadlock in the privatisation of the 584 remaining socially- and state-owned companies, which are generating an annual USD 800 million of direct expenditures for the state.

The deadline for transforming them into privately-owned companies is December 31, 2015.