Monday, July 24, 2006

So during this quiet period a post about the Serbian economy taken from an announcement made by the Serbian government recently.

The national investment strategy which so far has targeted the science sector has now been extended to the agriculture and energy sector. Other sectors such as education, health, judiciary and the environment (some money to tackle pollution) will also be included in the plan but details have yet to be put before parliament.
In total 17 sectors shall be included.

The value of the investment is expected to total just over a billion Euros. At least some of that money is expected to come from receipts of privatisation of state companies such as Vojvodjanska Banka and from the telephone company '063mobi' formerly owned by on the run tycoon Bogoljub Karic. The government is expected to net about 1.3 billion Euros from the sale of state companies this year.

All the details haven't been hammered out but 200 million EUR will be spent on improving the state of the roads and 150 million on building properties. The Tourism sector is expected to receive a 50 million boost - some of this money will go towards improving the investment potential of the Danube.

This is all very welcome - its commonly known that Serbia's infrastructure is poor owing to years of underinvestment. Its no surprise that even the monetarist inspired hawks at the IMF and other financial institutions aren't complaining about the potential inflationary impact of public spending. Although Serbian bank governor made a comment on a closely related issue in recent days - he says that economic growth or unemployment isn't his concern - inflation is. Professionalism to be applauded or a narrow vision of what economic policy is about?

1 Comments:

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4:16 pm  

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