Tallest building in Balkans opens soon in Sarajevo, Bosnia

The Avaz Twist Tower will be the new headquarters for Avaz, the popular Bosnian newspaper company.


The new tower went under construction in 2006 and it is expected to be completed some time in 2009. The Avaz Twist Tower will hold the record for being the Balkan's tallest tower and one of the most interesting towers in Europe. It is made up of a twisting glass facade and will be 142 meters tall with a 30 meter antenna reaching a total height of 172 meters.


Before the Avaz Twist Tower, the Bosmal City Center twin towers held the record for being the tallest towers in the Balkans, standing at a height of 128 meters. Avaz's current headquarters have been turned into a hotel and offices. 

To see pictures of the building please click here.

BBI Center opens in Bosnia's capital Sarajevo

BBI Center opened it's gates to public yesterday on 6th April 2009. It encompasses offices, shops, restaurants, different beauty saloons, clinics, huge parking space and lots of other things.


Investor in BBI Center is a BBI Leasing & Real Estate Ltd. Sarajevo, whose founders are the Islamic Development Bank, Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank, Dubai Islamic Bank and Bosna Bank International dd Sarajevo. The total charter capital amounted to nearly 40 million KM (ca 20 million €).


Bosnia Bank International was established on 19 September 2000 as the first bank in the region that operates on the principles of Islamic banking.


To see some pics of the centre, from construction to grand opening, please click here.

BASF opens regional headquarters in Bosnia

Company BASF Construction Chemicals BH opened the regional headquarters for the Bosnia-Herzegovina, Montenegro, Albania and Kosovo in Sarajevo yesterday. 

The headquarters' new building encompasses a laboratory for testing the quality of concrete. This will enable the continued support of implementation and monitoring of the development of innovative products and technologies, work on the optimal results and spending during the application of existing products and technologies. 

Director of the Department of Central Europe Herbert Frankenstain pointed out that BASF recognizes Bosnia as the leading market in the region with great potential in the construction sector, and that is why the company decided to open this laboratory.

Information on agricultural/food market in Bosnia

Today I found this great web site abundant with useful info on agricultural market in Bosnia. The web site is operated by USAID or more specifically their LAMP II project intended to develop agricultural sector in Bosnia. 

Here you can find demand analysis, inventory reports of different agricultural sub-sectors, consultant reports, budget analysis and so on.

See it for yourself:

http://www.usaidlamp.ba/en/index.html

Five companies apply for oil prospecting in Bosnia

Energoinvest - Bosnian company leading prospecting operations has reported that Transglobal Petroleum (Texas, USA), Longwiew Capital Partners (Canada) through it's subsidiary Seed Rock, Delta Hydrocarbons (Holland), MOL (Hungary) and INA (Croatia) have submitted their letters of intent regarding prospecting for oil in Bosnia.

Other companies from Austria, Germany, UK, Persian Gulf and Malaysia have also shown interest but are still to submit formal offers once the tender gets published.

So far the most interesting proposal has been submitted by Longwiew Capital Partners whose delegation has been to Sarajevo for discussions.

Prospecting is being planned in three different regions in Bosnia and above mentioned companies are ready to invest 80 to 100 million $US initially, per region . American Transglobal Petroleum is also offering to invest around 600 million $US in building an oil refinery with a capacity of 50.000 barrels a day.

The tender is to be published by the end of the year.

Coal mines generate losses

As I wrote before coal mines and coal plants are a big headache for Bosnian economy. Despite those facts Bosnian political decision makers continue to pump tax payers money into those economically and environmentally devastating fields.

Recently published facts show that eight mines (Kreka, Banovići, Đurđevik, Kakanj, Breza, Zenica, Bila i Gračanica) are 11,1 million KM (ca 5.5 million €) in minus.

At the same time those mines haven't payed health insurance and retirement fees for 12.600 miners to an equivalent of 170 million KM (85 million €). They owe their suppliers 48 million KM (24 million €) while 123 million KM (61,5 million €) of taxes are yet to be paid.

The combined loss of those eight mines reaches 352,1 million KM (176,05 million €) which clearly speaks for closure of those coal mines and investment of all that tax payer's money into something more lucrative, such as alternative energy, road and rail-road infrastructure or educational programs for all those unemployed who can't get any work due to lack of vocational training or poor education.

IT-outsourcing to Bosnia

Many companies go through laborious and costly processes of outsourcing their IT-services to countries like India and China. I have talked to a few people working with far-east and have heard them complain about quality, cultural differences and severely hampered communication.

On the other hand they still work in those countries due to the cost reduction it results in. Many are also happy with quality and have managed to overcome cultural differences but all of that took time and loads of money.

Is there a place for Bosnia to become an IT-outsourcing services provider?

Wages in Bosnia are higher then those in China or India but way below IT-wages in Western Europe or the US. On the other hand cultural differences are minor, time zones are the same (at least with the Western Europe) and communication is friction-free. 

So why don't we see IT-projects being outsourced to Bosnia on a larger scale? When do cultural differences and good communication bypass lower wages or how low should the wages be so that cultural and communications aspects become important? 

There are good examples of IT-outsourcing to former Yugoslavia. Swedish company Seavus is number one IT-company in Macedonia that has witnessed fully-organic growth. How can that happen in Bosnia?