The projection is that next year’s inflation will average 4.9 percent compared to this year’s average, which will bring us closer to what we had before the inflation started, said the director of the Republic Institute of Statistics Miladin Kovačević.
“We know that inflation was initiated by the international environment, i.e. it started there at the end of 2021, and then flared up to some extent at the beginning of 2022 with the beginning of the war in Ukraine, the disruption of supply chains and the like. In addition to the international environment, there is another factor that pushed demand , and that is money from the fiscal sphere with which the state helped the economy and the population,” he said.
He added that such a thing was necessary and that the fiscal policy brings protection measures, and the monetary policy amortizes it with restrictive measures, among which are the basic reference interest rate, then the upper and lower limits for deposits, and the mandatory reserve of banks for loans.
At the same time, Kovačević pointed out, this sterilization of the money supply for salaries and pensions cannot work immediately.
According to him, inflation is driven by energy and food, but when you look at the trend of inflation since spring, you can see that the year-on-year inflation for food was 24 percent in April and May, and now it was 14 percent, while the total inflation is 10.2 percent and it is close to descending to a single-digit level.
When it comes to the country’s debts, he pointed out that it is not only important how much the debt is in absolute amount, but what is its share in the gross domestic product (GDP) and what is the debt servicing rate.
The agreement on free trade between the Government of Serbia and China was signed in Beijing on October 17th of this year.
“The goal of concluding the Free Trade Agreement with the People’s Republic of China is to enable preferential access to the Chinese market for Serbian products, which, in addition to balancing the trade, i.e. reducing the existing foreign trade deficit and increasing the coverage of exports by imports, is expected to simultaneously expand investment and production capacities in Serbia and strengthen the overall economic activities”, it is stated in the explanation of the Law on Confirmation of the Agreement on Free Trade.
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