While the coal goes to Serbia, the citizens of Republika Srpska pay increasingly high electricity bills

From the new year current u Republic of Srpska increases in price by eight percent. The mines and thermal power plants there have been brought to the brink of collapse and have no coal - it is massively exported to Serbia.

Poor operations and lack of care for the power system in the Republic of Srpska have led to the brink of collapse of two pillars of this system - thermal power plants Ugljevik and Gacko, reports Deutsche says.

They were left without raw materials, and concessions for the exploitation of quality areas were given to private companies.

In just a few months, Elektroprivreda RS, a company owned by the entity government, is looking for a lifeline in increase in electricity prices, because it cannot ensure a stable system with these prices.

And not only that, from being a stable exporter, Republika Srpska now imports electricity.

From number one to the abyss

"We have come to a situation where we have become importers from an export-oriented company. The situation is alarming. There is no coal. Without it, there is no stable power system," says the President of the RS Elektroprivreda Trade Union Board, Koraljka Kovačević Markov.

"At this moment, Elektroprivreda RS is forced to buy electricity due to the shutdown. "Every day, that's around 600 euros," warns Markov.

In Ugljevik, they confirm that the situation is alarming, that production stopped at the end of November, and that the viability of restarting, which costs one hundred thousand marks, is questionable.

"I have been an employee of this company for 30 years. At no time did it happen that there was no coal in the landfill. Never in these thirty years. Unfortunately, that is the case now. We are now left to God," says the president of the Ugljevik Mine and Thermal Power Plant, Boban Benović, emphasizing that the coal being mined is of poor quality, and that private companies have taken over parts with quality coal.

"We were number one in the region, today we have sunk," says Benović.

Raise the price of electricity!

While the struggle to maintain a stable electric power system continues, the government of the RS broke and reduced the increase in electricity prices for households by an average of 7,9 percent.

The goal is to cover losses and mitigate the effects of poor business management. RiTE Gacko says that the main culprit for this situation is the government as the majority owner and that, judging by the reactions, nobody is interested in this issue.

"RiTE Gacko ended 2022 with a positive result of 11 million marks. In the first eight months of this year, they turned that profit into a loss of 18 million marks. We currently owe over 70 million to suppliers. At the meeting in the government, they said that they would create an action plan that does not exist yet, and they said that somewhere in the system, 40-some million was lost. That's why people are leaving their positions, and no one has been replaced," says Željko Tepavčević, president of the trade union organization RiTE Gacko.

He points out that this year there were as many as fifteen stoppages in the thermal power plant just because there was no coal. Without these two thermal power plants, says Tepavčević, there is no Elektroprivreda RS.

"It is devastating that in RiTE Gacko you have 45 percent of working machinery and when we come to the minister, they send three private individuals with small trucks to drive coal and stone under our excavators." Our bulldozer is standing so that the private sector could work," says Tepavčević, citing an example of concessions to private companies when granting concessions on exploitation fields of different quality.

"How much solids do you have to uncover for one ton of coal?" In the field given to private companies it is 1:3 or 1:4, while what went to the thermal power plant is 1:7 to 1:9. This means that for one ton of coal you have to dig up to nine tons of tailings," Tepavčević explains the absurd policy in granting concessions, which, he says, seems as if someone consciously wants ruin.

Coal by the roadside

According to the data of the BiH Agency for Statistics, last year about 1,3 million tons of coal were exported - hard coal, lignite, brown coal and coke.

Most of the coal goes to Serbia, especially from 2022, when official Belgrade announced the need for huge quantities of coal. That's when the massive exploitation of coal from Bosnia and Herzegovina started. Mines sprung up one after the other, whose work is still being warned by environmental protection associations, as well as the validity of issued permits.

Medna near Mrkonjić Grad, Bistrica and Bukova Kos near Prijedor are just some of the localities where exploitation is currently carried out in huge quantities and transported by trucks to Serbia. Although unprofitable according to all economic parameters, even transportation by trucks is cheaper than importing electricity, they estimated in Serbia.

Also, for the smooth operation of Obrenovac thermal power plants, the import of new quantities of coal was approved, because the Kolubara and Kostolac mines need revitalization, which is many times more expensive than importing coal, even at prices much higher than the market price.

"But they gave people huge sums of money, no one asked when they started digging, everything happened quickly." We didn't even turn around, and the mine was already in front of our door," explains an exasperated resident of Bukova Kosa, pointing to a mountain of coal next to the road ready for transport.

"Do you see this amount of coal standing by the side of the road?" I stopped counting the trucks with Serbian license plates that take away coal day and night," a local told us, who together with his neighbors fought against the opening of the mine at protests - unsuccessfully.

Slovenian penalty

It is similar in other mines throughout BiH, which mostly operate through intermediary companies, whose headquarters are in Serbia.

Thus, DW wrote two years ago about the exploitation of coal from the Medna mine near Mrkonjić Grad, after which the entire river area of ​​that area was polluted.

Even though there is coal, citizens have not been hit by increased electricity bills since January, allegedly due to a lack of raw materials, although no one denies that almost nothing has been invested in maintenance for the last thirty years.

During that time, millions of tons of coal leave BiH with a miserable concession fee, the amount of which generally cannot even cover the destroyed road infrastructure after transportation.

What could further complicate the electric power problem in the RS is the debt of RiTE Ugljevik to Elektrogospodarstva Slovenije (EGS-Ri).

Last year, the Arbitration Court in Belgrade passed a verdict in the dispute between Slovenia and RiTE Ugljevik, according to which this public company is obliged to pay Slovenians compensation of 67 million euros in principal and 58 million in interest. In addition, RiTE Ugljevik is obliged to supply Slovenians with a third of electricity for the entire time the thermal power plant is operating.

Privatization?

A few years ago, the Slovenians initiated a dispute against RiTE Ugljevik, seeking multimillion-dollar compensation based on pre-war investments in the thermal power plant, in which the then republics of Slovenia and Bosnia and Herzegovina jointly contributed capital, and on the basis of which a third of the produced electricity was supplied to the Slovenians until the beginning of the war.

Although some analysts believe that the collapse of thermal power plants creates the conditions for companies to be taken over by the purchase of shares by individuals, it is difficult to realize this work in practice without huge losses for Elektroprivreda RS, for which it is not financially ready at the moment.

During that time, the RS government took over the debt burden from the thermal power plant in Ugljevik, although the amount was not planned in the budget, the implementation of which is questionable anyway.

"The Government of the Republika Srpska accepted to pay ten million euros per year for the next seven years, plus one third of electricity, based on the decision of the Arbitration Dispute from Belgrade initiated by the Slovenians in RiTE Ugljevik, in order to somehow remove that ballast from Ugljevik and Elektroprivreda Srpska ", said the Prime Minister of the RS, Radovan Višković, pointing out that he is concerned that the management of this company has led the thermal power plant to a situation where there is no coal.

Although the RS government is the owner of this company, which operates within the Mixed Holding "Elektroprivreda Republika Srpska".