The World Bank’s Country Manager for Serbia, Tony Verheijen said that that he would present Serbia as a country that had turned “a new leaf” and committed itself to economic reforms at the upcoming annual Assembly meeting of the World Bank and the IMF.
He also said that the World Bank was planning to provide financial support for Serbia for the next year too, adding that the financial support would amount to 350 million USD and would cover the period from June 2016 to June 2017. When asked whether an even bigger financial support was planned for next year, i.e. from June 2017 onwards, Verheijen gave an affirmative answer.
“We are working on providing further support to your financial, energy and transport sectors”, he said in a statement for RTS.
“We are also planning to present two projects to our Board of Directors by the end of October. The first one is supporting the public enterprise reform and the second one is securing additional funds for the Corridor 10”, Verheijen underlined and added that the next project was planned for January and it pertains to children and youth education.
He went on to say that the World Bank spoke to the Serbian government in an effort to help the government to clearly demonstrate to the financial and capital market that Serbia had turned “a new leaf”.
“There are three very encouraging elements – growth of investments that facilitate growth, and the higher export as a result of growing investments. And, for the first time since 2008, the consumer spending has gone up. These three factors combined are considered sustainable factors for growth”, the World Bank’s Country Manager for Serbia explains.
According to him, the 30% growth in the construction sector, relative to last year, is especially encouraging because it will result in new jobs and new opportunities.
(Blic, 01. 10.2016)
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