Serbia's gas utility expects to import 1.85 Bcm of gas in 2017

BELGRADE (Reuters) -- Srbijagas, Serbia's gas utility, expects to import 1.85 billion cubic meters of gas next year, up from 1.75 billion cubic meters in 2016, a company official said on Thursday.

"Imports will ... depend on production in petrochemical plants and (Serbia's sole) steel mill," Dragisa Martinovic, an advisor to the Srbijagas CEO, told a panel in Belgrade.

Serbia receives more than 80 percent of its gas needs from Russia's Gazprom but is under pressure from the European Union to reduce its energy dependence from Russia to join the bloc.

According to available data, Srbijagas returned to a net profit of $39.74 million in the first quarter of 2016 after a 1 billion dinar loss in the same period of 2015, mainly due to higher sales.

To avert risk for the 2017 national budget which sets a fiscal deficit of 1.7 percent of output, the Serbian government must settle overdue payments to Srbijagas and the Elektroprivreda power utility estimated to total up to $172 million in 2016.

Reporting by Aleksandar Vasovic; Editing by Adrian Croft

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