The president of the Union of Serbian Economists, Aleksandar Vlahovic, said today, on the package of state aid measures to the economy, that one of the most important things is that the state has provided sufficient amount of money that guarantees that the companies will be able to continue functioning.
“The most important measure of this anti-crisis program is the massive pumping of liquidity and the return of confidence that must exist between the state-financial sector and the real sector, which is done through the guarantee scheme for loans to companies, said the President of the Union of Economists of Serbia, Aleksandar Vlahovic.
“Banks are liquid at the moment and have liquid assets, but it is logical that lowering that liquidity to the economy will be much harder, and the formation of a guarantee scheme will allow liquidity from the level of banks to be lowered to the level of the economy”, he said and added that the guarantee scheme is a support worth two billion euros.
The amount of two billion euros, he says, will allow banks to pay out loans through loans to businesses who need them most.
“This does not mean, at the same time, an increase in the total budget deficit by this amount, because it is a loan that will be used by commercial banks, and most of the guarantees will be given by the state of Serbia”, he said, adding that the scheme would increase the total public debt, but not by the absolute amount of support.
Vlahovic said that this measure stimulates supply and raises the level of economic activity.
Vlahovic said that the overall anti-crisis measures are in line with the existing fiscal space, which will allow further preservation of macroeconomic stability, which is very important.
It is very good, he added, that the measures of tax incentive policy are directly defined, through deferral of payment of taxes and contributions for all employees in the sector of small and medium-sized enterprises and entrepreneurs, that is, deferral of payment of income tax.
“Direct assistance in the form of three minimum wages for the SME sector will directly contribute to maintaining the number of jobs, avoiding redundancies”, Vlahovic said, noting that the measure covers more than 900,000 workers out of 1.6 million workers today.
He also added that the payment of 50 percent of the minimum wage for large-scale workers who are jobless is a direct incentive measure, and the payment of 100 euros to every adult citizen is a measure that encourages spending.
Vlahovic noted that the measures had not exhausted all the financial resources of the state.
“The measures are for a period of three months, which is expected to last a state of emergency, which does not mean that they will not be extended in case of need, and depending on how long the crisis embodied in Covid 19 will last”, he concluded, Dnevnik reports.
