The renewed British magazine “The Economist” in the latest edition spoke on successful business of companies in Gorazde.
Today Gorazde is known by products of the companies that have residence in this Municipality. With 357 employees, the Bekto Precisa factory makes plastic parts for car lights for Porsche, BMW and Audi. It also cranks out parts for skis and street lamps, in a joint venture with Hella, a German firm.
B&H is home to some surprising industrial clusters. Gorazde, in eastern Bosnia, is one of them. Others include Tesanj, Bijeljina and Visoko. Such places typically have dynamic mayors or entrepreneurs, and strong links to Germany. Gorazde has all three.
The average monthly (post-tax) Bekto salary is €664 ($864), comfortably above the B&H norm of €421 but only a fraction of German wages. Employees work hard for their money: the factory runs 24 hours a day, 362 days a year. Some 85% of what they produce is exported, mostly to Germany and Austria. Bekto Precisa is a popular employer. It has just advertised 30 new jobs and received 3,000 applications.
Wages are lower in China, of course, but delivery times from B&H to core European markets can be counted in days instead of weeks. And the quality of local products is high. Neil Lovell, an executive with Mosdorfer, an Austrian firm that buys €2m-worth of electrical equipment from Bekto Precisa a year, says: “We switched production five years ago from Slovakia because of the price advantage. But the quality here is absolutely fantastic.”
Bekto Precisa’s turnover, which was €20.1m in 2012, has been growing by 25-30% in recent years, yielding a profit last year of €1.9m. And it is not the only exporter in town. ASA Prevent, a much larger company, makes covers for car seats.
Enisa Bekto, the director of Bekto Precisa, said she wanted someone to run Bosnia like she runs her company. At which, she notes, many of the top managers are women.
