UNMIK/PR/1733
PRISTINA – Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General (SRSG) Joachim Rücker today participated in a conference on “Privatized companies and their performance.” This was the sixth such debate organized by Riinvest, marking the 13thanniversary of the Riinvest Institute and the first anniversary of the Riinvest University. The conference was attended by members of the Kosovo Assembly and the Government, civil society representatives, members of the business community, Riivest researchers, students and the media.
During the opening speech,the President of the Institute, Muhamet Mustafa, expressed his gratitude to Mr. Rücker for UNMIK’s achievements in the privatisation field and for helping to build a free and prosperous society in Kosovo.
In his remarks, the SRSG thanked the Riinvest Institute for being a “truly intellectual centre for Kosovo that has made quite a difference with regard to how economics are perceived and how economic politics are conducted in Kosovo.”
Concerning the economy and privatisation, Mr. Rücker stressed the necessity to see these issues from a positives perspective. “We should have confidence and optimism that Kosovo has a very good basis and that it has comparative advantages,including an entrepreneurial spirit and a very young population that is well educated and multilingual, which is one of the greatest treasures beyond all the natural resources that Kosovo has,” said the SRSG.
Mr. Rücker talked about Kosovo’s economic growth, stressing that “according to an IMF assessment Kosovo will have solid 6 percent real growth in 2008.”
Regarding privatization, Mr. Rücker said that “since the beginning of the privatisation process, we have now privatized 90 percent of the total value of the socially-owned enterprises. We have two larger enterprises that were not privatized, in Trepça/Trepca and Brezovica, but these were exceptions and they were outside the control of KTA.”
Lutfi Zharku, Minister of Trade and Industry, also took part in the debate.
