Serbia is under pressure from the International Monetary Fund to streamline, sell or shutter its many loss-making state enterprises, an outcome the government, facing presidential elections next year, wants to avoid.

"I will ask the biggest Chinese company to buy RTB Bor," he told reporters at a press briefing in connection with a visit by an IMF mission. "There's no one else who will buy it. I will beg Chinese leader Li Keqiang for that."

(Reporting By Thomas Escritt, editing by Larry King)