Belgrade Sends 140,000 Euros for Jumko Plant in Drvar

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic and the president of the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats, Milorad Dodik, toured the Jumko factory in Drvar on the afternoon of August 2, a municipality in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina where Serbs make up the majority. There, they put specific figures on the table: 140,000 euros for new equipment within fifteen days, and 1.5 million euros for building a shopping center. For Belgrade this was not a ceremonial stop on a one day trip, it is a line item in a foreign policy that has run through Serbia’s budget for years, and on the ground it is measured by whether anyone is still left to work in Drvar.

Equipment in fifteen days, nine new jobs

Vucic told the plant’s workers that the new equipment is coming quickly and that no one will be let go.

“I won’t deceive you the way I did when I first came here and said we would invest. We lose money here every year, but I’m proud of how hard you work. So that we can improve, so the losses are smaller, and so we can turn a profit in the future, we will now invest another 140,000 euros here in new equipment. You’ll get it very soon, within the next fifteen days. We don’t plan to let anyone go. You could even hire nine more people,” said the president of Serbia.

The line about the annual loss was delivered in front of the workers, inside the plant, and it changes the nature of the whole announcement. This is not an investment justified by revenue projections, it is a decision to keep the municipality’s only industrial plant running, with an open admission that it currently loses money.

Why is Serbia investing in a plant that runs at a loss?

Because the calculation behind Drvar is demographic before it is industrial. Drvar is one of four Serb majority municipalities in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina that receive support from Republika Srpska’s institutions, and the workforce at the Jumko plant is mostly women, a point Vucic returned to several times in his remarks.

“Drvar is not a cave, and it’s not a house. You, the women, are the ones keeping Drvar alive. Thank you for that,” Vucic said, adding that he had received two letters from Jumko’s female workers.

Nine new jobs is a small figure in absolute terms. In a municipality this size it is a measurable difference, and it is the only number from the entire visit that shows up directly in household budgets.

Shopping center: one and a half million euros from Serbia, one million marks from Republika Srpska

The second announced project is a shopping center. Serbia is putting in 1.5 million euros, Republika Srpska one million convertible marks. Vucic himself commented on the ratio between the two figures, noting that Dodik had made what he called a smart calculation, since Serbia gives in euros and Republika Srpska in marks, which puts the ratio at roughly three to one.

The arithmetic backs him up. The convertible mark is fixed to the euro at a rate of 1.95583, so one million marks is worth about 511,000 euros. Serbia’s contribution is, in other words, close to three times larger than Banja Luka’s investment in the same building.

The president of Serbia immediately added a condition that has nothing to do with money.

“The only problem is how you’re actually going to regulate that legally. You need to find people from this area who want to work and earn a living. And we will do everything we can to help,” Vucic said.

The tally: 4.01 million euros to Drvar, half toward debt

For the first time, the total sum of past investment in the municipality was disclosed.

“In recent years we, as Serbia, have invested 4 million and 10 thousand euros in Drvar. Half went toward debts, half toward other things,” Vucic said.

That detail about the debts matters more than it first appears: roughly two million euros did not go into machinery, buildings or infrastructure, it went to closing out old obligations. As the overall tally of aid to Serbs in Republika Srpska and Bosnia and Herzegovina, a figure above 142 million euros was cited, mostly through infrastructure projects, which means Drvar accounts for less than three percent of that sum.

Municipal head Dusica Runic welcomed the guests with a clearly stated expectation.

“It is an honor for us to host the president of Serbia for the third time. We will talk about projects already carried out in Drvar with the help of the governments of Republika Srpska and Serbia, as well as about future projects. We expect Serbia, led by President Vucic, to keep providing strong support to our municipality,” Runic said.

Dodik: we work in sync

After touring the plant, Dodik shifted the message from the factory to politics, stressing that the project would not have happened without Vucic.

“We are one team in defending Serbian national values, Serbian national pride and the Serbian people as a whole. We work in sync on everything that represents this kind of progress,” said the SNSD president.

Drvar was the second stop on a one day tour. The day began at the Rmanj monastery, which we covered this morning, and ends at a rally in Sitnica near Ribnik.

The first verifiable deadline from the whole visit is a short one. The 140,000 euros in equipment was promised within fifteen days, which puts it in mid August, and that is a date against which the promise can easily be checked.