Serbia’s budget deficit might get to RSD 150 billion by the end of this year instead of the planned RSD 122 billion, economist Miladin Kovacevic said Tuesday.
If the Fiscal Council is right in saying that the budget deficit in February was RSD 28 billion, then the forecast that the deficit could reach 4.5 percent of GDP by the end of the year seems to be a well-founded argument, Kovacevic said at the presentation of the latest issue of the Macroeconomic Analysis and Trends (MAT) magazine in Belgrade.
The Fiscal Council said Monday that the Serbian government needs to make sure that the budget deficit is kept within the target for this year and reduced in 2014 to prevent the occurrence of a public debt crisis.
Fiscal Council’s experts warn that the fiscal trends from last year and the first two months of this year show that the 2013 budget deficit could reach 4.5 percent of GDP instead of the planned 3.6 percent.
If you add the expenses arising from the government’s latest interventions, such as, for example, the aid to the Zelezara Smederevo steelworks, the deficit in real terms could reach five percent of GDP, the experts added.
Source Tanjug
