“By March 20, Serbia received 692 million euros worth of foreign direct investments, which is the best result so far,” said Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić.
According to him, Serbia needs to achieve a 2.5 percent GDP growth to catch up to developed countries.
“I am the only one who openly says that we made a mistake with our decision regarding lithium. I still claim that we made a mistake. We could have demanded mining companies to work according to the highest standards and Serbia would have flourished if we did this. We would have 3.5-4 percent higher growth on an annual basis. In ten years, we would have reached the level of development of middle-developed countries of the EU,” said the President of Serbia.
“Even if the government changes its decision and it won’t, we lost five years,” he added and noted that mining is crucial for the country’s progress.
“Molybdenum is used for the production of weapons and tools and its price has jumped from 70,000 to 90,000 dollars per tonne and we have it,” he pointed out.
As far as the average salary goes, Vucic promised that the average salary would have reached 1,000 euros by 2025.
In terms of natural gas reserves, Vucic said: “We currently have 528 million cubic metres of gas in reserves. We will try to increase this quantity to 700 million cubic meters because we need that gas for next winter,” said Vučić, adding that Russia allowed us to keep another 100 million cubic metres in their part in the Banatski Dvor underground storage.
(B92, 26.03.2023)