The Ministry of Economy is mulling this move due to a huge decline in the value of copper in the world markets, which has gone from nearly USD 8,000 per ton three weeks ago, to USD 5,400.

This trend, the newspaper adds, is likely to continue.

All this has prompted the ministry to consider delaying announcing the tender, planned for mid-October.

If the tender were to be called now, the ministry officials fear that “no serious investor would risk spending several hundred million dollars to pay off the company’s debt and modernize its capacities”.

To make matters worse, the RTB copper mines’ obsolete equipment and outdated smelter raise the price of a ton of this metal produced there to just under USD 5,000.

Meantime, the Privatization Agency says it received no official information or order to put the tender on hold. The latest reports suggest, Ve?ernje Novosti writes, that the tender might take place in the second part of this month.

The eastern Serbia-based copper mining and smelting complex previously fell victim to two failed privatization tenders in as many years.

Romania’s Cuprom and Austria’s A-TEC both backed out of signed acquisition contracts after they failed to provide banking guarantees for the deal to go through.

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