As a state, we are doing everything in our power to restart Jugohrom. We stimulated the owner, who is negotiating the sale of the plant with a Turkish potential buyer working in the same business, to complete the filters. We hope that they will agree and that the new owner will be more prompt, Prime Minister Zoran Zaev said on Thursday.

We shut down Jugohrom and conditioned it until it set the filters it will not open because of the Polog people’s health. We provided more than 1.1m euros to build the filters, and the boss has so far invested 500,000 euros himself. We are negotiating to motivate him to continue with the procedure putting filters for which we provided an additional 1.1m euros, although it is privately owned, Zaev said in response to a question at a Parliament session.

At the moment, he said, negotiations are underway between a Swiss owner with a potential buyer from Turkey who is working in that business and is ready to complete the whole process and hopes to reach an agreement.