Kosovo struggles to shake Wild West image among investors

A general view of Pristina, capital of the breakaway Kosovo province, is seen as the sun rises, January 22, 2008.

Credit: Reuters/Hazir Reka

By Fatos Bytyci

ASTRAZUB, Kosovo | Mon Dec 31, 2012 7:09am EST

ASTRAZUB, Kosovo (Reuters) - When Briton Christopher Gilbert and London-educated Etrur Albani teamed up to dig marble in Albani's native Kosovo, they knew they were taking a gamble.

For two years, Albani and Gilbert, who was better known in Britain as an entertainment industry entrepreneur, knocked on literally hundreds of doors in search of intrepid investors.

They eventually turned up 12, convincing them that the risk associated with investing in this young Balkan nation was overblown and that the image of crime and corruption did not match the reality.

One of the poorest corners of Europe, Kosovo is in dire need of outside investment as it tries to make a go of the independence it won from Serbia in 2008.

By September, Gilbert and Albani's Fox Marble Holdings (FOX.L) was listed on the junior tier of the London Stock Exchange and had spent 1 million euros in readying five mines for business.

Mining is seen as a potential driver of growth in Kosovo, a small country blessed with mineral deposits and Europe's youngest population, but shackled with a damaging reputation for gangsters and graft.

Now, Fox Marble's dream is in tatters, its licences to cut and sell Kosovo's marble revoked and millions of euros of investment hanging in the balance.

Whether the victim of over-zealous officials or something more sinister, Fox Marble has gone from investment trailblazer to cautionary tale in the risks of doing business in this country of 1.7 million people roughly half the size of Wales.

"We spent two years convincing people that the country risk was not something that people needed to be concerned about and now everybody is turning to me and saying, 'We told you so'," Gilbert told Reuters.2

In December, Kosovo's Mining and Minerals Commission ICMM.L revoked four of Fox Marble's five licences, saying the firm had failed to start work within an agreed time frame.

"It could take years for the work to start. How do we know?" the chairman of the ICMM board, Ahmet Tmava, told Reuters. "Our resources must not be held hostage."

Gilbert said the firm had needed more time to raise funds but had already spent heavily on machinery, taxes and preparing the mines.

He cited a Kosovo law saying that the ICMM is obliged to inform the company in writing and give it 2-4 months to address the complaint. Fox Marble got neither, Gilbert said. Tmava said the company was informed "verbally".

"VERY STRANGE"

Asked what was behind the decision, Gilbert, who was in Pristina trying to save the licences, chose his words carefully.

He said the mining authorities had acted outside the law, and suggested there was perhaps more to the matter than met the eye. The mines contain deposits valued by Gilbert and Albani at billions of euros.

"It's certainly a very strange situation for a company that is spending money in Kosovo. We don't know what the realpolitik is behind this, but clearly there is something going on."

Asked about the allegations of political interference in the marble case, Kosovo's minister of economy and development, Besim Beqaj, said only: "I'm not aware of anything like that."

Britain's ambassador to Kosovo, Ian Cliff, said the British government was "very concerned" and, in a written response to questions from Reuters, said he had heard of allegations of political interference.

"I hope this is not the case," Cliff said, adding that British Foreign Secretary William Hague had raised the issue with Kosovo "at the highest level".

The United States and the European Union have spent an estimated 4 billion euros in stabilising Kosovo and encouraging good governance and growth since NATO went to war in 1999 to halt the killing and expulsion of civilians by Serbian forces fighting rebels from Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority.

With ethnic tensions subsiding, Western powers formally gave up "supervisory" powers over Kosovo this year. But an EU police and justice mission retains some executive authority to investigate cases of organised crime, corruption and war crimes.

NATO retains some 6,000 troops on the ground, mainly in the north where a small Serb minority still rejects Kosovo as a sovereign state.

The government insists it is changing perceptions. There are positives: Kosovo's legislative framework has been crafted to meet most EU standards; construction is thriving, driving average annual economic growth of 5 percent over the past five years; foreign direct investment was up 14 percent to 379 million euros in 2011; in October the World Bank lifted Kosovo from 126 to 98th place in a poll on ease of doing business.

"Kosovo has been challenged by a bad image unfairly attached to it due to the past," said Valdrin Lluka, head of the Kosovo Investment Promotion Agency, part of the Ministry of Trade.

"When investors come with expectations of high crime and corruption, they see a beautiful country, friendly people and a friendly business environment," he told Reuters. "Good news is not news, so foreigners get to know only the dark side of Kosovo, and that's what's damaging us."

HARD TO INVEST WITHOUT BRIBES?

But there was more bad news in November: an Austrian firm said it had stopped printing Kosovo's biometric passports for now because 1.4 million euros in fees had not been paid.

Natali Velija, a German citizen and the company's local partner in Kosovo, was arrested on suspicion of embezzling the money, but Velija says it was spent on bribes for a handful of officials from the Ministry of Interior.

The Austrian company denies bribing anyone.

Kosovo suffered a heavy blow last year when the sale of the country's most profitable company, the state telecom concern PTK, collapsed after corruption charges were filed against a number of senior PTK officials.

Avni Zogiani, founder of the Cohu (Wake Up) non-governmental organisation dedicated to fighting corruption, said it was extremely difficult to invest in Kosovo without political connections or a readiness to bribe.

"When we talk about small and medium-sized projects of a few million euros, then they're dealt with through bribes," he said.

Albani said he and Gilbert had struggled to shake the stereotype. "When we went to Italy to buy machines," he said, "they asked, 'Why are you coming with a letter of credit? Where's your suitcase of money?'"

Investors and Western officials in Kosovo also cite frequent power cuts, an underdeveloped administration, widespread tax evasion and high interest rates on bank loans, some as much as 25 percent as banks hedge against political and economic instability.

Kosovo is ranked 105 on Transparency International's graft perception index, on a par with Bolivia, Gambia and Mali.

"I spend a lot of my time persuading British companies and financial institutions that the Kosovo 'country risk' is less than they think - so that they will support investment here," said Cliff, the British ambassador.

"The key practical question for the Kosovo institutions is this: can Kosovo afford to lose 10 million pounds of British investment and the jobs and exports that will go with it?"

Gilbert and Albani, first inspired by a 2005 USAID report extolling the quality and colour of marble in Kosovo, stood to make a lot of money.

They estimate the five mines that Fox Marble won licences to exploit, including Red Rock near the village of Astrazub in southwest Kosovo, contain around 240 million cubic metres of marble worth billions of euros.

Albani and Gilbert say Kosovo marble was used in building the White House in Washington and the Vienna Opera House.

In Astrazub, villagers recall marble mining under socialist Yugoslavia, and say their ancestors told stories of its extraction when Kosovo was part of the Ottoman Empire.

Signs of traditional, small-scale excavation can still be seen. A new mining venture would be a boon for the local economy, which like the rest of Kosovo struggles to absorb new jobseekers who often end up emigrating for work. Kosovo also has lignite, lead, chromium, zinc, nickel and silver deposits.

Mining in Kosovo ground to a halt during the violent disintegration of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, and has only restarted on a limited scale over the past few years. In the north, Kosovo's giant Trepca lead and zinc mine complex stands idle, hostage to complex ownership disputes.

Fox Marble has filed a complaint with the ICMM, and Gilbert insisted they would not give up. "We're not going anywhere. This is grave for Fox Marble, but it's a tragedy for Kosovo." (Editing by Matt Robinson and Mark Heinrich)

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Europe struggles with rescue fund, may turn to IMF

1 of 3. Melted euro coins are seen in this photo illustration taken in Bern November 8, 2011.

Credit: Reuters/Michael Buholzer/Files

By Jan Strupczewski and Valentina Za

BRUSSELS/MILAN | Tue Nov 29, 2011 2:21pm EST

BRUSSELS/MILAN (Reuters) - Euro zone ministers struggled to ramp up the firepower of their rescue fund and raised the possibility of asking the IMF for more help on Tuesday after Italy's borrowing costs hit a euro lifetime high of nearly 8 percent.

Two years into Europe's sovereign debt crisis, investors are fleeing the euro zone bond market, European banks are dumping government debt, deposits are draining from south European banks and a looming recession is aggravating the pain, fuelling doubts about the survival of the single currency.

Italy had to offer a record 7.89 percent yield to sell 3-year bonds, a stunning leap from the 4.93 percent it paid in late October, and 7.56 percent for 10-year bonds, compared with 6.06 percent at that time.

The yields were above levels at which Greece, Ireland and Portugal were forced to apply for international bailouts, but European stocks and bonds rallied in apparent relief at the strong demand, with the maximum 7.5 billion euros sold.

"In an ideal world, these yields ... would serve to give the Ecofin/Eurogroup a sense of added urgency, but this is a far from ideal world," said Peter Chatwell, rate strategist at Credit Agricole in London.

The euro had earlier dipped on a report in business daily La Tribune that ratings agency Standard & Poor's would lower its outlook on France's AAA credit rating to negative within 10 days, dealing a potential body blow to the euro zone's ability to rescue heavily indebted countries.

LOOKING TO IMF IF EFSF FALLS SHORT

In Brussels, Eurogroup ministers agreed to release an 8 billion euro aid payment to Greece, the 6th installment of 110 billion euros of loans agreed last year and necessary to help Athens stave off the immediate threat of default.

They are also due to discuss the details of a second, 130 billion euro bailout for Athens and agree on how to bolster their bailout fund to help prevent further contagion in bond markets, although the final amount of leverage looked set to fall short of market expectations.

Ministers said the International Monetary Fund may have to provide more help, possibly bolstered with more European money.

"We will have to look at the IMF which can also make available additional funds for the emergency fund. I think countries in Europe and outside of Europe should be prepared to give more money to the IMF," Dutch Finance Minister Jan Kees de Jager told reporters.

The ministers will agree details of how to leverage the 440 billion euro European Financial Stability Fund (EFSF) so it can help Italy or Spain should they need aid, although worsening market conditions mean it is likely to miss the original target of 1 trillion euros.

The report about France's credit rating came at a delicate time. Paris is the second largest guarantor of the EFSF bailout fund, and one of only six AAA states in the euro zone. S&P declined comment.

Officials said the EFSF leveraging mechanisms could become operational in January, but that may be too late.

"We have talked about leverage though private money, but it would be two or two and a half times an increase so not sufficient and we have to look for other solutions to compliment the EFSF and that in my mind will be the IMF," de Jager said.

With Germany opposed to the idea of the European Central Bank providing liquidity to the EFSF or acting as a lender of last resort, the euro zone needs a way of calming markets and the ECB shows no sign yet of responding to widespread calls to massively increase its bond-buying.

One option EU sources said is being is explored is for euro system central banks to lend to the IMF so it can in turn lend to Italy and Spain while applying IMF borrowing conditions.

"We will discuss with the ECB. The ECB is an independent institution, so we will put on the table some proposals and after that it is for the ECB to take the decision," Belgian Finance Minister Didier Reynders told reporters.

The ECB failed for the first time since May to fully offset 203.5 billion euros in euro zone government bond purchases, adding to fears that the debt crisis is ratcheting up stress on the bloc's banking sector.

A Reuters poll of economists showed a 40 percent chance of the ECB stepping up bond-buying with freshly created money within six months, something it has opposed.

The poll forecast a 60 percent chance of an ECB rate cut to 1.0 percent next week and a big majority of economists said they expect the central bank to announce new long-term liquidity tenders to help keep banks afloat at its December 8 meeting.

MONTI TO UNVEIL HIS PLANS

New Italian premier Mario Monti was to outline his fiscal and economic reform plans to the 17 euro zone finance ministers amid reports, officially denied in Rome and Washington, of a possible impending approach to the IMF.

Italy has debts of 1.9 trillion euros - equivalent to 120 percent of national output - and needs to refinance some 340 billion euros of maturing debt next year with big redemptions starting in late January. It has promised to balance its budget in 2013 but Tuesday's auction suggested it will struggle to keep borrowing costs under control without international help.

Italian daily La Repubblica said EU Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn would tell euro zone ministers that Italy needs to introduce extra fiscal measures worth 11 billion euros immediately to meet its target.

Most analysts say more profound measures are now needed, most involving more action from the ECB and an agreement eventually to issue common euro zone bonds, something Germany has opposed.

Berlin has pinned its efforts on a drive for closer fiscal integration among euro zone members.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel will not make a deal at a December 9 European Union summit to stop resisting joint issuance of euro zone bonds in exchange for progress on strengthening fiscal rules, German MPs quoted her as saying.

She told a closed-doors meeting Europe was "a long way from euro bonds", suggesting they may not be ruled out forever.

For now, Germany and France are pressing for coercive powers to reject euro zone members' budgets that breach EU rules, alarming some smaller nations who fear the plans by-pass mechanisms for ensuring equal treatment.

Berlin and Paris aim to outline proposals for a fiscal union before the EU summit that is increasingly seen by investors as possibly the last chance to avert a breakdown of the single currency area.

(Additional reporting by Marius Zaharia in London, Erik Kirschbaum in Berlin, Cecile Lefort in Sydney; Writing by Paul Taylor/Mike Peacock)

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