Belgrade - Serbia and the Italian carmaker Fiat on Monday
signed a joint-venture deal expected to bring almost 1 billion euros
(1.3 billion dollars) in investment and revive the moribund Serbian
car industry.
'This is a big day for Serbia,' President Boris Tadic said after
the contract was signed.
Fiat would pour 700 million euros and Serbia another 200 million
euros into the Zastava factory in Kragujevac, which once made the
infamous Yugo car.
Fiat was slated to take a 67-per-cent stake in the plant 110
kilometres south of Belgrade and raise output to 200,000 units
annually by 2010, Economy Minister Mladjan Dinkic said.
The Italian partner would decide which car it would make in
Kragujevac, Dinkic said.
'It is still a secret. But it will be a brand-new, A-segment car,'
he told reporters.
The deal would later involve the expansion of the production of
bus parts with Iveco cargo vehicles and Magneti Marelli, the maker of
auto components, through two more joint ventures.
Serbian officials said the investment would create some 5,000 jobs
in the Kragujevac area, which was hard hit when the former Yugoslavia
disintegrated in 1991, as well as force infrastructural development
worth tens of thousands of euros.
Eager to attract Fiat, Kragujevac has released the new venture
from all local taxes for the next 10 years and pledged free land for
any expansion project.
The new firm would replace the Zastava car factory, a monopolist
which sold tens of thousands of units annually before the break-up of
Yugoslavia in 1991.
It also exported a few hundred thousand units to the United States
in the late 1980s, in what was billed as the 'deal of the century' in
Yugoslavia.
The deal petered out quickly and was as quickly forgotten at home;
however, Yugo's reputation as one of the worst cars in history has
survived to today in the US.
The factory has been in the doldrums ever since, surviving on aid
from the government while barely assembling a few thousand low-
quality vehicles such as the Yugo, which is largely unchanged since
it was presented as the domestic 'national car' in 1981.
The recession in Zastava, by far the largest employer in central
Serbia, badly depressed Kragujevac, a town with a population of
175,000, which in the 1950s was the 'industrial motor' of Serbia and
Yugoslavia.
The announcement of Fiat's investment in Zastava has stirred hopes
of a revival of the town, where the price of luxurious residences,
reportedly sought for Italian experts, has soared.
From directly creating 5,000 jobs, Serbian officials say they
expect the Fiat investment to boost employment across the board in
central Serbia.
'It is a new start,' Tadic said.
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