President of the Fiscal Council Pavle Petrovic told Tanjug on Wednesday that the forthcoming talks between the Serbian government and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) will be aimed at monitoring the reached agreement after the review of the budget for 2011 and setting the framework for the 2012 budget.
Petrovic confirmed that, according to the Law on Budget System, the government should have already adopted the budget for 2012 by November 1 at the latest, and the parliament by December 15 this year.
However, prior to that, the government has to reach an agreement on next year’s budget with the IMF, and then adopt a legal proposal which will be forwarded to the parliament, Petrovic said.
Expert negotiations regarding the first review of Serbia’s economic performance under the Stand-By Arrangement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) will start Thursday, immediately after the IMF delegation arrives in Belgrade, the local IMF office told Tanjug.
The official talks are set to start early next week and will last until mid-November.
The Ministry of Finance started working on the report on fiscal strategy for 2012 with projections for 2013 and 2014, which marked the official start of the budget planning process.
It has been envisaged that in 2012, Serbia’s GDP growth will equal 3 percent, going up from this year’s RSD 3,359 billion to RSD 3,614 billion (around EUR 35.9 billion), and that inflation will drop from 7.9 percent in this year to 3.5 percent, reads the report on fiscal strategy for 2012 with projections for 2013 and 2014.
Source emg.rs
