Of all the countries that presented their programs, Serbia has shown that it is by far the most serious, which is why it expects excellent results by the end of this year, said Sinisa Mali after the economic video conference.
Minister of Finance of Serbia, Sinisa Mali, participated in the ministerial dialogue of the Ministers of Economy and Finance of the EU Member States, the Western Balkans and Turkey, and the meeting was also attended by representatives of the European Commission and the European Central Bank.
Economic reform programs were presented, and the main topic was the remediation of the economic consequences of the coronavirus, the Ministry of Finance announced.
Mali said that Serbia is fighting against the negative consequences of Covid 19 and that for who knows how many times it has received great praise for economic reforms, especially for the results from 2019 and the measures that are being implemented.
“We welcomed this crisis with healthy public finances and enough money in the budget. We have high foreign exchange reserves, and we have had a budget surplus for four years. Now we have taken measures and set aside 5.1 billion euros to help the economy and citizens,” he reminded.
He pointed out, as it was announced, “that of all the countries that presented their programs today, Serbia has shown that it is convincingly the most serious, which is why it expects excellent results by the end of this year.”
“As the European Commission said, this crisis will have the least bad effect on Serbia. The best growth rate is expected by the end of the year, and I will remind you that at the end of the first quarter we had a growth rate of five percent of GDP, while the eurozone fell 3.3 percent. Other countries are far behind us,” Mali said.
The Minister assessed that these results “give the wind in the back” and that he expects Serbia to have the best economic result of all countries this year, not only in the region, but also in Europe.
Serbia and the EU agreed on six recommendations regarding further mitigation of the negative impact of the spread of the coronavirus on growth and employment through appropriate fiscal policy discretionary measures, support for economic recovery through increased growth-oriented capital spending, in terms of increased share of GDP.
An agreement was also reached on improving the management of state-owned enterprises, inter alia through restructuring.
“The recommendations are also aimed at closely monitoring the challenges to financial stability resulting from the coronavirus pandemic and taking adequate measures, providing effective, transparent and non-discriminatory support to affected companies, taking measures to preserve employment through short-term programs and effective active labor market policy measures, as well as improving social transfers in order to provide adequate support to low-income people, who are at risk of poverty or social exclusion,” the Serbian Ministry of Finance said, Novosti reports.
