The Association of Travel Agencies and Tourist Workers of Serbia – TAS Initiative, announced today that it has decided to form a Business Bureau for Entrepreneurs in which a “black” list of banks and insurance companies will be registered, based on their moves aimed at discrimination of tourism activities by denying loans and other services.
“The Business Bureau for Entrepreneurs and Businessmen will register all moves by banks and insurance companies, which were aimed at discriminating against economic activities. They behaved like ‘war profiteers’,” the statement said.
It is added that the public will be presented with a “black” list of banks and insurance companies that immediately after declaring a virus pandemic, put the tourism sector in a high risk zone, so no travel agency, no travel agency employee, could get allowed minus, checks or credit.
The association pointed out that Serbia helped the tourism sector by paying minimum salaries, and in the 17 months of the epidemic, the tourism sector was paid 7.2 minimum salaries per employee, or about 1.800 euros.
At the same time, on that paid amount, as it is stated, the employers had to pay the state around one thousand euros in the name of taxes and contributions.
“In 17 months, the tourism sector received assistance from the state of Serbia of around 800 euros, or 45 euros per month per employee. It is the help that managed to save the tourism sector from complete collapse, according to the data of the relevant Ministry of Trade, Tourism and Telecommunications,” it is stated in the announcement.
Insurance companies operating on the territory of Serbia have also taken advantage of this situation and raised the prices of their services, which travel agencies are legally obliged to use, by 300 percent.
“In the countries where the institutions function, as well as the legal system, such behavior is characterized as a monopoly association for the purpose of making extra profit,” the statement reads.
It is added that the insurance companies “succumbed to the influences of various external factors, and instead of assessing the risks, they gave their offers on a ‘notice’, that is, they functioned with a list of ‘eligible’ and ‘unsuitable’.”
The association stated that banks and insurance companies will have to pay a fee if they want a list from the bureau about their condition.
The Development Fund of the Republic of Serbia, which, according to the decision of the Government, was supposed to approve liquidity loans for the most endangered activities by the end of 2020, did not complete its work within the set deadline, justifying that it received over 20,000 requests and did not receive all requests.
“The question of us businessmen is whether we can also tell the Tax Administration how we did not manage to do our job on time and pay taxes for that,” the Association pointed out, N1 reports.
