Srbijagas absorbs Novi Sad-Gas: 28.5 billion dinar debt

Srbijagas held a claim of 28.56 billion dinars (~244 million euros) against the Novi Sad-Gas distribution company as of December 31, 2025, according to the merger agreement under which the Novi Sad utility ceases to exist as a separate legal entity. All assets, all liabilities and 94 employees pass to the state-owned company. That closes a process that began seven years earlier and that ran the whole time alongside a growing debt.

The merger is formally a change of status and substantively an accounting move inside the same state system. Creditor and debtor now sit on the same balance sheet, so a claim that had been building for years stops being a line item between two separate companies.

Why did the debt grow to 28.56 billion?

The earlier reading shows the pace. On December 31, 2018, Srbijagas held a claim of 13.389 billion dinars (~114 million euros) against Novi Sad-Gas. Over seven years the obligation rose by roughly 113%, more than doubling, without a single year in which it fell far enough to break the trend.

The distributor’s own trading explains where the growth came from. In the last reporting year Novi Sad-Gas posted operating revenue of 5.8 billion dinars (~49 million euros) and a net loss of 2 billion dinars (~17 million euros). The loss therefore equals roughly a third of revenue booked. A company operating on that margin cannot service its obligation to the gas supplier out of its own working capital, so each year the shortfall was rolled into the outstanding claim held by Srbijagas.

What exactly passes to Srbijagas

The agreement transfers the entire property of the Novi Sad company: cash held in bank accounts, licences and permits for energy activities, real estate and equipment, the internet domain www.novisadgas.rs, and a stake in the Millennium sports and business centre in Vrsac. The liabilities go with the assets, and the full workforce moves across.

The reasons given for the merger are settling the mutual debtor-creditor relations between the two state-owned companies, preserving assets and business continuity, and ensuring uninterrupted, stable and continuous supply of natural gas to the market. The wording is standard for status changes in the energy sector and commits the acquirer to no specific restructuring of the distribution network.

For customers in Novi Sad and the surrounding municipalities distribution does not stop: licences and contracts pass to Srbijagas, which will now bill directly for what until yesterday was an internal invoice. The effect on the consolidated Srbijagas balance sheet is a different matter. The 28.56 billion dinar claim disappears as a claim, but the loss that generated it does not disappear with it, it simply moves into the acquirer’s result. The open question is no longer who owes whom, but how an annual shortfall of about 2 billion dinars gets covered once there is no separate legal entity to book it against.

The next real indicator will be the first consolidated Srbijagas report in which the Novi Sad distribution appears as part of the parent company rather than as a debtor. Until then the only measurable figure is the one in the agreement: 28.56 billion dinars owed by one state-owned company to another.

Does consolidating state-owned energy companies solve the problem of losses, or simply move it onto a bigger balance sheet?