‘Kosovo Delusion’
Although the prospects of his newest foray into Kosovo’s power sector aren’t clear, there isn’t a query that the nation’s energy infrastructure is in sore want of modernization.
For causes by no means absolutely defined, Kosovo determined in 2012 to promote its energy transmission infrastructure to a Turkish consortium for €26 million. In return for a 20 p.c share of energy prospects’ electrical energy payments, the traders agreed to take over about €400 million in debt the enterprise, a unit of the state-owned energy firm KEK, had accrued.
Whereas the transfer solved the corporate’s short-term debt issues, it made discovering an investor for the remainder of the enterprise, which incorporates coal mining and the 2 energy stations, all of the harder.
As soon as often known as a “state inside the state” with 18,000 staff, KEK’s workforce has shrunk in current a long time to about 5,000. It’s harmful work that has price the lives of about 50 staff over the previous decade, however with out KEK, Kosovo would go darkish.
Situated within the city of Obiliq, close to the location of the Battle of Kosovo, the legendary medieval confrontation between the Ottoman and Serbian armies that continues to inflame Serbian nationwide passions, KEK’s energy stations stand on the crossroads of Kosovo’s previous, current and future.
It was simply outdoors Obiliq — named after a Serb knight who, legend has it, slayed the Ottoman sultan through the 1389 battle — that Yugoslav strongman Slobodan Milosevic delivered a seminal speech in 1989 marking the 600th anniversary of the battle, describing Serbia as “the bastion that defended European tradition, faith and society.”