Serbian Radical Party (SRS) Vice President Vjerica Radeta said today that seven agreements adopted yesterday in the Serbian Parliament increased Serbia’s public debt by almost 830 million euros and that, if it continues at that pace, “it is quite certain that our public debt will reach a level of 70 percent of the value of gross domestic product (GDP)”.
“Only at this session yesterday, a new public debt of some 829.9 million euros was adopted, and this certainly already increases the percentage of public debt in relation to GDP,” Radeta told reporters.
She stated that in nine years, the authorities of the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) have increased their public debt by 12 billion euros and now has a value of 56.8 percent of GDP.
“If we go at this pace, and some economists already predict it, and based on what was adopted in the Assembly yesterday and what is still being prepared by the end of the year, it is quite certain that our public debt will reach 70% of GDP because it will reach the level of 30 billion euros,” Radeta estimated.
According to her, the public debt of Serbia has “already exceeded 27 billion euros”, which includes “more than 400 million euros of so-called non-guaranteed loans, non-guaranteed debt of local governments”.
She stated that the latest loans are loans from the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the French Bank, intended for the “Green Agenda, which has become current in Serbia, because the EU requires it of us.”
“Other loans are for the modernization of the railway, for the construction of the gas interconnector from Nis to the Bulgarian border, for the rehabilitation of the embankments along the Sava and the Danube, and out of these almost 830 million euros, only 431.6 million euros are for the Moravian Corridor,” said Radeta.
The vice president of the SRS pointed out that the party “has nothing against investments in infrastructure” and that “there are many spaces in the state budget where a serious amount of money could be saved, which would reduce the need to take a loan,” Beta reports.
