When the hands coincide… And when the New Year’s wishes begin, from an economic point of view, everyone will surely wish for lower inflation, for prices to finally stabilize.
Inflation
The year 2022 was difficult, marked by high inflation, which is at the highest level in Serbia in the last 11 years. In November, the prices of food, drinks, clothes, and electricity were on average 15 percent higher compared to the same period in 2021.
According to the data of the Republic Institute of Statistics (RZS), milk, cheese and eggs are more expensive in November by an average of 43.1 percent compared to the same period of the previous year.
Why has Serbia become sensitive to the growth of food prices?
The growth of global inflation was worrying in 2022, geopolitical tensions further deepened, the flow of gas from Russia to Europe was reduced by as much as 80 percent compared to the previous year. Central banks in the world and in Serbia are also tightening their monetary policies by increasing reference interest rates.
All this had an effect on the increase in the price of loans for the population and the economy, which are now being borrowed more expensively by taking out bank loans compared to the previous year.
In Serbia, high inflation particularly affects citizens with low incomes, as Nova ekonomija recently wrote, who spend most of their income on food and energy, because these products have risen in price the most.
“Inflation in the world at this level has not been seen for decades, in the euro zone, according to Eurostat’s preliminary estimates, it reached a historical maximum of 10.7 percent in October, while in Germany it is 11.6 percent,” said NBS governor Jorogovanka Tabaković. .
New fiscalization
The second half of this year was marked by fiscalization and the introduction of new fiscal cash registers and e-invoices, which created a lot of problems for many businessmen because there was not enough time to switch the system to a new model of fiscalization that involves the application of modern hardware and software solutions.
The Ministry of Finance said that the new system is being introduced in order to improve the control of the collection of public revenues, and the new fiscalization is one of the instruments that the authorities will rely on in the coming period to a significant extent in the fight against the gray economy.
However, a large number of businessmen before the introduction of fiscalization (from May 1, 2022) complained that they had a problem because the new fiscal cash registers did not work at first. Businessmen then assessed that the new fiscal cash registers were introduced at an inconvenient time.
Cadastre
The real estate cadastre was blocked for almost a month this summer due to a hacker attack, as announced by that institution. Namely, the cadastre stopped working on June 14, and the Republic Geodetic Institute announced that on June 20, the Institute began gradually putting into operation priority services necessary for the functioning of the real estate market.
RGZ Union: The administration must be responsible for the hacker attack on RGZ
New economy previously wrote that Serbia received a loan from the World Bank for the improvement of the real estate cadastre in the amount of 57 million euros, including the digitization of numerous processes in the Republic Geodetic Institute (RGZ) and the Agency for Economic Registers.
The digitization of the cadastre did not meet the basic requirements, and according to experts, the right to property of citizens, which is one of the basic human rights, should not have been endangered.
RGZ trade unions have sent open letters to the president and prime minister of Serbia several times this year, in which they have objections to the work of RGZ management, Nova Ekonomija writes.
