Serbia manages to decrease deficit

In the past year Serbia successfully stopped the trend of growing deficit, and fulfilled much of its agenda concerning economic reforms and fiscal consolidation, Serbian Finance Minister Dusan Vujovic said Saturday at an annual press conference in Belgrade.

In annual presentations of the results of the government, Vujovic told journalists in the government building that Serbia in 2014 had a deficit of around 6.6 percent of the gross domestic product which was some 2 percent lower than analysts had expected.

He continued that in the first three months of 2015, Serbia had a deficit of just 21.1 billion dinars (around 190 million dollars) which is around 2 percent of the GDP.

According to Vujovic, this is twice lower deficit than that was agreed with the International Monetary Fund.

"We will probably not be able to maintain this result until the end of the year, but the deficit will be certainly lower than what we have planned," Vujovic said, explaining that government plans are to decrease the deficit by 1.5 billion euros by the end of the year.

He stressed that the decrease of deficit was contributed by better collection of taxes, higher profits of public companies, lower pensions and salaries of employees in public companies.

Vujovic concluded that additional measures might include the increase of price of electricity that could take place after the first revision of Serbia's arrangement with the IMF that is scheduled for the beginning of May.
Source: XINHUA