“We are anticipating substantial funds to be spent on capital investments in accordance with the Serbia 2020-2025 programme. This will significantly boost the growth of the Serbian gross domestic product which we expect to be between 5.5 and 6 per cent next year.“
Belgrade, December 15, 2020 – This morning, the President of the Republic of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić, opened the World in 2021 conference, organized by Color Media Communications and Diplomacy & Commerce magazine.
On the occasion, president Vučić pointed out: „It seems to me that the consensus among people has never been this strong as they agree that the pandemic-induced crisis has marked not only 2020 but the entire decade because of the health problems it has caused, and as equally important, the problems it has caused to economies worldwide. This crisis has surpassed the Great Depression and the Great World Economic Crisis from 1929 to 1933. Although we are a small country, we have done a few important things. Firstly, from the very beginning, we fought (the pandemic) with strong and razor-sharp measures to preserve the lives of our people and to preserve and build our health system. We are one of the few countries, at the European level, that built new hospitals, thus predicting that the end of the first wave of the pandemic was nowhere near and demonstrated that we don’t do things in spurts. Rather, we predict things that will happen in the future in a serious and trustworthy manner and act responsibly.”
Speaking about the economy, the president pointed out that the state authorities understood the catastrophic consequences that the coronavirus has had on the economy and that they reacted promptly. “So far, we have invested more than six billion euro in our economy. Of that, about four billion is direct money from grants, and the rest are loans, to a lesser extent, which we made available through the Development Fund, worth more than 105 million euro. To a greater extent, we made these loans available through the so-called guarantee schemes where the state of Serbia subsidized the difference in interest rates to domestic commercial banks, which was of great importance primarily for large, but also for small and medium-sized enterprises, ” president Vučić underlined.
Speaking about the fluctuations of the domestic GDP, and the financial assistance given to the general population and businesses, the president said: “We have tried to achieve the best possible results without further jeopardizing the Republic of Serbia’s public debt. I am especially proud of the fact that the Republic of Serbia’s public debt has recorded the lowest increase compared to other European countries. If we look at the most powerful countries in Europe, their public debt growth rate ranged from 10 and 12 per cent, even going up to 15.16 per cent, and in Serbia, it grew to only five per cent during the coronavirus pandemic. We have also managed to devise a stronger support programme, both for the general population and sectoral support to certain economic branches. Yesterday, we paid the last minimum wage to employees of travel agencies, hoteliers and travel workers, as well as caterers, and that is a huge amount of money. I believe that these people are satisfied with our reaction in that sector as well. However, the state is not a piggy bank from which you can always take as much money as you would like. ”
The president said the following about plans for the next year, referring to investments, and what will be the focus in 2021: “For us, 2021 is a very ambitious year. We are anticipating substantial funds to be spent on capital investments in accordance with the Serbia 2020-2025 programme. This will significantly boost the growth of the Serbian gross domestic product which we expect to be between 5.5 and 6 per cent next year, i.e. for Serbia to be, together or cumulatively, the number 1 country in Europe in terms of GDP growth.“
„We will also invest in the construction of sewage grids and atmospheric wastewater treatment plants, which will drastically and dramatically change the living standard of our citizens. We will invest in the further construction of motorways and railways in Serbia, which we are constructing faster, stronger and more intensively than ever before in the Serbian history. We are talking about a huge amount of money. There is also the gas pipeline, in which we are investing in order to boost domestic companies, which even if foreign companies win relevant tenders, will always participate in the construction of infrastructure with more than 50 per cent of works.
Secondly, we will increase personal consumption by raising pensions and civil servant salaries 5.9% and 5% respectively. Furthermore, we will increase the minimum wage by 6.65%, which will lead to higher salaries for workers. Even though that we worked less instead of more in 2020, we want to encourage personal consumption.
The third pillar on which we will base our GDP growth is intensive work on continuing to attract foreign direct investments, where Serbia was an overall champion not only of this region but, as the Financial Times reported, proportionally to the country’s size, the champion of the whole of Europe. We will work on that because many countries today want to implement deindustrialization, and Serbia wants reindustrialization. I believe that this will bring results that will help us to return to the first pillar I spoke about earlier, which is the protection of people’s lives, the improvement of our health system and securing a better living standard for our doctors and nurses.
We will continue to work very hard while insisting that Serbia performs important tasks regarding the rule of law and the EU accession. Of course, Serbia will continue to act in accordance with its best interests and implement its foreign policy by attracting investments from all parts world, as well as by strengthening its political and economic ties with other parts of the world. Thank you very much, I wish you a lot of success and, above all, I wish everyone good health, ” concluded Aleksandar Vučić in his address.
About the World in 2021 conference
The World in 2021 Conference is one of the oldest conferences organized by Color Media Communications and has already become recognized as an event that closes the current year with conclusions about the political, business, and social environment in Serbia and opens issues that will be important next year.
The Economist: The World in 2021 conference will be held on December 15, 2020, in a hybrid format – part of it will be broadcast from the House of the National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia in Belgrade, and part can be watched on our YouTube channel – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duk5oAQS3Q4&ab_channel=ColorMediaCommunications .
Just like every year, we will assemble leading people from the Serbian government, the Vojvodinian government, ambassadors, economists and leading businesspeople from Serbia and the region, as well as people from the social and cultural milieu. The aim of the conference is to give opinions, analyses and reviews on the political and economic environment and the investment climate, as well as on the development of society as a whole, through a constructive dialogue between representatives of state institutions, businesses, the diplomatic corps, and cultural and public figures.
The Mozzart Company is the conference’s general sponsor. The conference is supported by the Ministry of Culture and Information of the Republic of Serbia, the Ministry of Labour, Employment, Veteran and Social Affairs of the Republic of Serbia, the European Investment Bank, Srbijagas, Coca Cola and NCR.
For more information please go to www.communications.rs/svetu20201 .