All city departments under one roof - Belgrade's authorities interested in "Inex" building

City of Belgrade will participate in the public auction for sale of building of "Inex Interexport" in Kraljice Marije Street. The city authorities have decided to make that move in order to put all of its departments, which are currently situated in nine different facilities on the territory of whole capital city, under one roof and, thus, reduce overall operating costs of the city administration. Public opening of the bids for purchase of this facility is schedulled for November 13th.

At the beginning of October, the city of Belgrade purchased the documentation from the Privatization Agency for participation in the auction for sale of the facility at 12,900 square meters, which is in the possession of stock company "Inex Interexport" in bankruptcy.

- The primary reason for possible purchase is reduction of operating costs of the City Administration. The citizens of Belgrade would benefit the most from that because they would stop wasting precious time since all services would be available to them at one place - said Vesna Ivić, the Head of the City Administration.

According to her words, if all the government employees were working in one building, the operations of the City Administration would be much more efficient. That would also be useful for the city budget because the rental or sale of the remaining space would bring additional income to the City Budget.

Situation is such that the city departments are situated in several locations all around the city. The largest number of city secretariats are situated in 43-45 27. marta Street. The vicinity of that facility, which shares infrastructure with the building in Kraljice Marije Street, is another thing that was taken care of.

In addition to the facility in 27. marta Street, of which surface is about 13,000 square meters, the city administration is also situated at Nikole Pašića Square (5,300 square meters), Masarikova Street (5,600 square meters), Golsvordijeva Street (1,500 square meters), Makenzijeva Street (1,700 square meters), Tiršova Street (5,100 square meters), as well as in Old Court (4,600 square meters).

Public auction for sale of the building in Kraljice Marije Street is the fourth auction in the last 14 months, and all previous attempts failed because there were no interested potential buyers. By the way, every time the new public invitation was announced, the estimated value of the building was smaller, so that it currently amounts to 1.9 billion RSD.

People in the Privatization Agency said that the bids would be received prior to November 13th, when they would be opened, but they were unable to specify how many interested potential buyers there were.

(Note: complete text is taken over from newspaper "Blic" of October 29th, 20009)