President Aleksandar Vucic says that higher growth, as forecast by the IMF and the World Bank, will allow Serbia to carry out capital investments.
Speaking in Astana, Kazakhstan, Vucic emphasized the importance of attracting investments from all over the world.
In a statement to reporters, the president said foreign investors “know well how to read IMF an World Bank reports, as do Kazakh businesspeople.”
“According to the Doing Business list, Kazakhstan is several places ahead of us, primarily because of they are best at protecting minority shareholders. And we have to learn from them,” he added.
Vucic said that economic growth allows “a slight increase in salaries and pensions, and capital investments.”
“The Preljina-Pojate road alone will cost us a realistic 800 million euros. The Pozega-Cacak road costs 400 million euros. When you see that, then you realize how important it for the growth to be higher, because you will have more projects that mean life. In order to achieve that growth you must have more spending, exports and investments,” the president said.
Vucic stressed that “more investments require biggest incentives.”
According to him, those countries which base growth on consumption, via large increases in wages in the public sector, face growth decline.
“With us it’s the other way round. These are excellent trends and people in Serbia can certainly understand that. Serbia is essentially on the right track,” Vucic said.
He pointed out that there is “a growing nervousness in relations between the EU and the US, as well as China” – and that “we must seek investors in all parts of the world.”
When it comes to the Western Balkans, “Serbia is bar none,” Vucic said, adding that he wants his country to, in two years’ time, attract “60 percent of all investments in the entire Western Balkans.”
Source; B92
