ECONOMY: An Island of Prosperity and Tolerance in Serbia

By Vesna Peric Zimonjic Reprint | | Print |

Vesna Peric Zimonjic

NOVI PAZAR, Serbia, Sep 3 2001 (IPS) - Novi Pazar, a town located some 300 kilometres south of Belgrade, is turning into an island of prosperity and tolerance in Serbia.

The town, inhabited by 70,000 Muslims and Serbs, has more than 500 factories that make designer clothes sold all over the region.

The factories make copies of the most famous brands — Levi, Calvin Klein, or Armani jeans and jackets — that can hardly be distinguished from the originals.

The items produced include Paul Shark and Lacoste T-shirts, sweaters, as well as Fila, Elesse and Nike sportswear, and footwear.

The items cost only 20 percent of prices charged for similar goods in the West. “All the regimes have left us to do what we know best – trade and make money”, says Nagib Kameniscanin, a local businessperson.

The tradition of trade goes back to 1455, when Novi Pazar became an important spot on the caravan routes of Ottoman Turkish empire.

The town, situated within Sandzak area, has been divided — in modern times — between Serbia and Montenegro, that make the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

Sandzak has 440,000 inhabitants, 60 percent of them Slav Muslims. They call themselves Bosnians and are related to Muslims in Bosnia-Herzegovina. They share the same language with their neighbours, Orthodox Serbs.

Both share the common desire for hard work and for making money. “It’s in our blood”, says Velimir Stojanovic, a Serb shop owner. “There’s hardly anything else we can do.”

Centuries of Turkish rule let the locals trade and make money. The tradition survived under the Communist regime that took over in 1945.

After the collapse of Communism, the former Yugoslavia saw major investment into small and medium sized textile industry in the early 1970s. It helped the economic survival of the region in the worst times – the wars of disintegration in the 1990s, international isolation and the air raids against Serbia by the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) in 1999.

“Trade always finds its way,” Kameniscanin says. “It knows no boundaries.”

“Some factories employ only 15, but some have up to 300 workers,” says Safet Krlic, owner of “Kasaba Jeans” factory. “The average salary is 500 German Marks (217 U.S. Dollars), very good money here”. Average monthly salary in the rest of Serbia is three times lower.

Except for the old centre with its typical Turkish architecture, mosques and churches, new spacious homes are being built both by Bosnians and Serbs at the outskirts of the town. Streets heave with fashionable cars and dresses.

Textile machinery and raw material are imported, through channels known only to locals. That goes for details like buttons, thread of specific colour, and logos.

More than 20,000 people work in local factories. At least the same number of their family members sell the goods in more than 2,300 shops and in two huge open markets in Novi Pazar. Factories work five days a week, while shops and markets have no break.

“It would be a loss to close over the weekend…That is when shop owners from all over (the region) come here and buy goods,” Krlic says.

Hundreds of private cars and mini-vans with registration plates from all over Serbia and Montenegro clog the streets of Novi Pazar over the weekend.

Stability in the Balkans could re-open trade with former Yugoslav republics of Croatia, Bosnia or Slovenia, local businesspersons say.

The town is regarded as a big outlet store by factory and shop owners. Trading is done in stable German Marks, mostly between sellers and buyers who have known each other for years.

Prices of jeans, footwear or T-shirts go up by 50 percent or double once they appear in fancy shops in Belgrade, in Podgorica, the capital of Montenegro, or in Pristina, the capital of Kosovo. Everybody makes profit in the chain.

Narcisa (23), who sells sweaters and T-shirts at a stand at the Novi Pazar market, already has a car and plans to start building a house with her future husband, Nermin.

“Business is stable all the time…salaries are good. Why ruin all that for the sake of some war or bloodshed that would destroy all we have,” she says.

Narcisa, along with the 70,000 inhabitants of the town, is thriving to keep Novi Pazar as an island of prosperity and tolerance in Serbia where ethnic hatred against non-Serbs were rampant during the regime of former President Slobodan Milosevic.