Vucic opens Tigar Pirot to any buyer after 220 million aid
President Aleksandar Vucic said in the village of Temska near Pirot that Serbia will accept any privatization model for Tigar, as long as the plant keeps running and most of the workforce stays.
Serbia paid the Tigar plant in Pirot 220 million dinars (~1.9 million euros) to get it through the summer months, and on August 1, 2026, President Aleksandar Vucic said he is prepared to accept any privatization model for the company. He attached a single condition: production must not stop, and most of the workforce must stay.
He said it while talking to the mayor of Pirot, Vladan Vasic, during a tour of villages in the Pirot area. The wording leaves little room for interpretation.
“We will accept every kind of privatization, every kind of solution, just so that Tigar works”
He added that the attempt should be to save “part of the workforce, or the largest part of the workforce”. No headcount was given during the visit, and reports from it do not carry a figure either. He also said that everyone asking for impossible things while avoiding private buyers is, in his words, toying with the state.
What 220 million dinars every three months actually buys
The 220 million dinars was reported here earlier, when the money was approved for the summer season. What is new is that the president is now the one saying this cannot keep repeating on a quarterly cycle.
“for the state to bleed every three months does not make much sense”
That works out to roughly 73 million dinars a month (~625,000 euros) of budget money that keeps the lines moving and the wages paid. It is not capital investment but liquidity cover: the cash goes into working capital and is consumed inside the same quarter, adding no production capacity and returning nothing to the state, which here is both creditor and financier.
That is why linking the budget figure to a concession on ownership matters. Until now the message from Belgrade was that the plant would be kept alive until a solution appeared. The message now is that the solution is any buyer who keeps the plant producing.
Is Tigar heading for bankruptcy?
No. The company’s fate has for years been tied to a pre-packaged reorganization plan, known in Serbia as UPPR: a court-confirmed deal with creditors that avoids bankruptcy proceedings. The plan was confirmed in late 2022.
According to reporting from February 2025, it provides for the cancellation of 8,156,236 existing shares and the issue of new shares with a nominal value of 3 million dinars, created by converting public revenue claims into equity. A strategic investor seeking majority ownership must put in a recapitalization of at least 10 million euros, and a public call for bids is due within three months of the court decision becoming final. Belgrade-based Hevea Global was named at the time as a possible candidate, with part of the creditor pool registering reservations about it.
That framework is not new and Vucic did not announce it in Temska. It is the earlier context into which his August 1 statement lands as political cover: the state will not block the choice of investor over the shape of the sale.
The rest of the Pirot visit
During the same tour, Vucic announced a possible return of the Serbian Army to Pirot and proposed a 20% pay rise for doctors working in village clinics.
The next measurable point in this story is not another statement but the public call to creditors and a recapitalization bid with a number attached to it. Until then the open question is whether the budget gets another request from Pirot in the autumn, and how large it will be.
