Registration of public property by 2020 – Sixth extension of deadline

Roads, bridges, railways, forests, rivers, mineral water springs, mines, grazing land, buildings, apartments, commercial space, hospitals, schools, faculties, artworks, cars, money and securities – Serbia owns all this. However, nobody knows with certainty how much of it there is or what it's worth. This will remain so for at least another three years, as the deadline for the registration of public property has been extended until 2020, Politika reports.

This was done through amendments to the Law on Public Property, adopted by the National Assembly of Serbia several days ago. Initially, the deadline was December 31, 2017, but it has now been extended – for the sixth time.

Those responsible in municipalities, public companies and institutions who have not registered their use of state resources for over 20 years, stand to be penalized with fines ranging from 50,000 to 200,000 dinars in case they fail to do so within the next three years. This is a new feature compared to previous regulations.

The Unified Register of Publicly Owned Real Estate contains around 133,935 real estate unit entries. That's how many were registered by mid-October at the Property Directorate of the Republic of Serbia, which takes care of public property.

On the other hand, the Republic Geodetic Authority, also in charge of running a property register, had 24.6 million real estate units in its base as of Tuesday, December 19, 2017, of which a considerable number is publicly owned.

Mile Antic, coordinator at the Network for Restitution in Serbia, says that the fact that there are such discrepancies in registered property and that a lot of it is not registered at all nearly caused Chapter 32 in the EU accession negotiations not to be opened, because, if it is not known who owns what, no statement of accounts of public companies can ever be accurate.

– Both databases are incomplete and therefore unreliable. Thanks to the restitution, the state has learned what it owns in certain cases.