Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said last night that there will be no new sets of measures to help the private sector to cope with the crisis, and he recalled that Serbia has allocated five billion euro as financial assistance while, for instance, Great Britain allocated only a billion euro more than Serbia.
“Boris Johnson (the British PM) had announced a big set of measures and British companies will get six billion euro in assistance. Our set of measures is worth 5 billion euro. PCR tests alone cost us a million euro a day and bear in mind that we’ve been in this situation for 100 days now. The costs are huge, but the State is holding up well,” said Vucic.
He added that the State has coped well with the crisis and helped companies by disbursing three-months-worth of the minimum wage.
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“The last instalment will be paid on July 7, it’s our task; we then gave the famous 100 euros to over 6 million citizens. I am happy to be able to implement the same measures as the most developed countries in the world, without feeling the fiscal instability. This shows how strong the Serbian economy is,” said Vucic.
Serbia is the only country that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has not reduced growth forecasts, Vucic explained, adding that this means that public finances are under control. The IMF has lowered projections for several countries in Europe and around the world, and they are now much more pessimistic than they were three months ago.
For example, the IMF has lowered growth projections for the euro zone from -7.3 to -10.2, for France from -7.2 to -12.5, for Italy from -9.1 to -12.8, and has forecast growth for Russia and China.
“The only country whose projection of -3 has not been changed is Serbia, which means that we have implemented excellent measures. Representatives of the International Monetary Fund even told us “in secret” that they would agree with our more favourable assessment, but it is not good for Serbia to “stick out too much”. This shows that public finances are stable, that public debt is under control and that it is possible to continue disbursing civil sector wages and pensions,” the president concluded.
(Blic, 02.07.2020)
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