 A LONG TRADITION OF INDUSTRIAL PRODUCT |
As a central republic of former Yugoslavia, Bosnia has been developing for decades the metal, leather and textile industry. Attention was always placed on the big sectors of the Yugoslavian economy such as metal and metal-related industries (production of engines, cars, military industrial components, steel, and aluminium). Unfortunately, most of these capacities have been either totally destroyed or are out of operations due to war. Yet, the fact that Bosnia had all this at its disposals for such a long time had made it very proficient and experienced in these businesses. These companies have even taken part in international tenders for big contracts of road construction, electrical plants and distribution networks. Bosnian companies that participated in these businesses were Energoinvest, UNIS, Hidrogradnja, Vranica, ZGP etc. These companies are known for their successful and highly sophisticated operations in Libya, Iraq, Turkey, Germany, and Poland among others. Before the war, Bosnia had more than one million employed workers of which around 800.000 used to work in the industry sector. An important part of this capacity has either been destroyed or looted during the war. Mr. Mehmed Drino, the General Manager of Hidrogradnja says that his company had cooperated with the most respected and reliable construction companies before the war and that it strongly intends to re-establish these relationships.
"The business philosophy of the company has constantly been developed in order to adapt the company's activities to the markets needs. In this regard, it included various co-operations with domestic and foreign partners. Partnership is one of our key assets on both, local and international markets. Let me give you some examples: our cooperation with Enka in Turkey (a leading construction company in Turkey and Europe). We also worked with Behtel from San Francisco, USA, and finally on a very interesting but demanding project in Iraq. This was a huge and challenging project from a financial, technically and technological approach. Its purpose was the construction of a large dam in Iraq, amounting to almost $US 1.7 billions. Unfortunately, this project was to be stopped due to the Gulf War, so only one third of the project was completed. Therefore, this business opportunity turned out to be a big shock for the company, because we lost a lot of money, machinery and equipment. At that time we were among the world top ten in construction. The ENR list contains the most successful contractors all over the world; in 1990 we were ranked "8" for water infrastructure; in 1986, we were at the 6th place in the Middle East top Ten and few years before that, we were at the 16th place of the leaders regarding the design-construction contractors' list. So, we were really among the top Ten in the world, and we managed to stay among the best.
Unfortunately, another historical shock was the war in BiH. In this war we lost all our equipment, plants and machinery, which resulted in 80 $ millions of damages. In order to describe you our position at that time, (our HQ were in Sarajevo even during the war), I can tell you that we lived in a totally blocked and surrounded city, and that we had to carry out all our operations under these conditions. We had no electricity, no water supply, gas, food, phone, e-mail and no possibility to reach the rest of the world. I am very proud that we managed, not only to retain all our international markets, but also to open new ones. At that time we had a very big project in Libya. By the way, we have been working in Libya for more than 30 years without interruption, and we have succeeded to keep it even during the war in Bosnia. During the war, we managed to open new markets in Tunisia, Greece, as well as a small branch office in Germany.
We now have some other international markets, and plans to enter new markets. And that is what we are doing. These are related to Jordan and Malaysia. For the moment, we are working in Libya, Jordan, Malaysia, Greece and Germany.
| So, when someone asks us what improvements have been done, I'm happy to say that we achieved many great things. Even though it was a very demanding task, as we were engaged in the usual activities of our company, we did it with joy and pride. The other thing is, when you live in a totally blocked city, without electricity, water, gas, possibility to transport people and goods, without communications, and you manage to collect a lot of money, you manage to organize transport of goods to the city, and you manage to carry out all this under fire, then we can say this was a big managerial lesson.
So, among all business and management schools, MBA and other, I would say my best managerial school was my position in the project of reconstruction of Sarajevo," says Mr. Drino.
Another example of a successful international business is Energoinvest. Its General Manager, Nedzad Brankovic, says that despite the fact the company was badly damaged during the war it managed to recover and get back its markets in Northern Africa, Far East, Russia, USA and Mexico.
"Energoinvest has based its core business in the electrical energy systems, namely the generation, transmission and distribution of electrical power. In the development stage of Energoinvest, during the first two decades, besides this core activity, it has dealt with a whole range of other activities. In this regard, Energoinvest developed technologies dealing with gas and oil on one hand, and with non-ferrous metals in Mostar, on the other hand. Growing beyond this initial idea, and beyond the local market, Energoinvest started expanding towards the foreign markets as well.
Nedzad Brankovic, GM ENERGOINVEST
Before the war, the business group Energoinvest has seen years with an annual income of up to 2,5 billion USD, and exports out of ex-Yugoslavia of up to 800 million USD. This sort of profit was achieved in the fields of electrical energy, oil and gas, and non-ferrous metals; all this was done in the light of the core idea of Energoinvest to develop its own technologies, production and distribution networks, together with building our own complex facilities. Energoinvest was a business group comprised of 104 subsidiary legal entities active in different scopes of work, whose companies, branches and contracts were present in practically all continents," says Mr. Brankovic.
In the military sector, big damages were caused and it affected Bosnia very much since it was given a big role in business in former Yugoslavia. It is estimated that around 200.000 workers worked in the military industry: in production of tanks (Famos factory - Sarajevo), planes (Soko Mostar), mines and explosives (Vitezit - Vitez), heavy guns (Bratsvo - Travnik), ammunition (Igman - Konjic), etc. The whole military industrial complex is totally destroyed.
Yet, something of what might be important has remained - a high level of industrial culture and training of its managers and workers, especially in construction and metal industry. As it had been said earlier, in some areas businesses have started to make profits and that trend is likely to remain for coming years. |
