The Ministry of Finance estimates that 71.2 percent of the measures from the national program for the suppression of the gray economy during 2019 and 2020 have been fully or partially implemented, Danas writes. Progress has been made in overseeing online commerce, but nothing has been done to train judges to combat the gray economy.
On the other hand, many data and facts call into question the possibility that a lot has been done to combat the gray economy and that more money is now flowing into the state budget because of it.
The Minister of Finance, Sinisa Mali, claims that he is satisfied with the fulfillment of the plan for the fight against the gray economy, so he announced the implementation of a new program in that area.
In the previous plan for the fight against the gray economy, the most was done to encourage fair competition, legal entrepreneurship and employment, where 78.9 percent of the planned activities were fully or partially realized, almost the same number of activities 78.8 percent were carried out to raise public awareness of harmfulness of the gray economy.
On the other hand, the least than planned was done with the reform of the Tax Administration, only 61.1 percent.
The previous figures, as it is noted, speak about the realization of the planned measures, but not about the presence of corruption in the economy.
The first program for the suppression of the gray economy was made in 2015, and then they used data from 2013 on the share of the gray economy of 30 percent in the Serbian gross domestic product (GDP).
The National Alliance for Local Economic Development, which is a member of the Coordination Body, conducted a survey in 2017, according to which a rather large decline in the gray economy was determined.
They found that the volume of the gray economy in registered companies, in turnover and payment of wages, decreased from 21.2 percent of GDP in 2012 to 15.4 percent of GDP in 2017, and it is estimated that the gray economy makes up 14.9 percent of GDP.
The Ministry of Finance estimates that 71.2 percent of the measures from the national program for the suppression of the gray economy during 2019 and 2020 have been fully or partially implemented, Danas writes. Progress has been made in overseeing online commerce, but nothing has been done to train judges to combat the gray economy.
On the other hand, many data and facts call into question the possibility that a lot has been done to combat the gray economy and that more money is now flowing into the state budget because of it.
The Minister of Finance, Sinisa Mali, claims that he is satisfied with the fulfillment of the plan for the fight against the gray economy, so he announced the implementation of a new program in that area.
In the previous plan for the fight against the gray economy, the most was done to encourage fair competition, legal entrepreneurship and employment, where 78.9 percent of the planned activities were fully or partially realized, almost the same number of activities 78.8 percent were carried out to raise public awareness of harmfulness of the gray economy.
On the other hand, the least than planned was done with the reform of the Tax Administration, only 61.1 percent.
The previous figures, as it is noted, speak about the realization of the planned measures, but not about the presence of corruption in the economy.
The first program for the suppression of the gray economy was made in 2015, and then they used data from 2013 on the share of the gray economy of 30 percent in the Serbian gross domestic product (GDP).
The National Alliance for Local Economic Development, which is a member of the Coordination Body, conducted a survey in 2017, according to which a rather large decline in the gray economy was determined.
They found that the volume of the gray economy in registered companies, in turnover and payment of wages, decreased from 21.2 percent of GDP in 2012 to 15.4 percent of GDP in 2017, and it is estimated that the gray economy makes up 14.9 percent of GDP.
The goals of the program for the suppression of the gray economy were to reduce the share of the gray economy in registered companies from 14.9 to 14.5 percent of GDP.
The second goal was to reduce the share of unregistered companies in the market by 17.2 to 15 percent.
The third goal is to reduce the VAT gap by two percentage points and finally reduce the share of informal employment in total employment from 19.5 percent in 2018 to 17.5 percent in 2020.
As stated in the analysis of the effects of the program done by NALED, research for the first two goals could not be conducted, ie it is not known how much the share of the gray economy is in GDP.
It is not known whether the third goal, reduction of the VAT gap, ie the difference between the collected and potentially possible VAT for collection, has been fulfilled.
It is also stated that the data for the period January-October show that the total public revenues are lower by 2.6 percent compared to the same period last year, while the collection of VAT revenues increased by 0.4 percent, Nova Ekonomija reports.
