Fiscal Council: Non-Selective State Aid Measures Paid by Citizens and Economy Through Higher Excise Taxes

The non-selective state aid measures in this year comprise 0.7% of the gross domestic product (GDP), and the excise taxes have been increased in order to compensate for those budget expenditures, stated the president of the Fiscal Council of Serbia, Pavle Petrovic. At the session of the Committee on Finance, State Budget and Control of Public Spending of the National Assembly of Serbia, at which he presented the report on the work of the Fiscal Council for 2022, he noted that all that had an impact on the inflation and that it would have a bad effect.

– The Fiscal Council has been analyzing budget expenditures since the pandemic year of 2020. The non-selective budget spendings are socially unjustified, because they are not directed at those who are supposed to get that aid and because they don’t stimulate production – said Petrovic.

He pointed out that the most recent package of measures of aid, which had been included in the budget revision, could lead to an additional increase of the inflation, which was already higher than in the comparable countries and which would last longer.

Petrovic praised the measures that the Government of Serbia had started implementing in Elektroprivreda Srbije (EPS) and said that they showed the intention to cut the harmful ties between the politics and the operations of that company.

He added that true reforms in EPS were yet to follow, pertaining to solving the issues of surplus workers and the lack of the necessary worker profiles.

Vlada Republike Srbije

Narodna skupština Republike Srbije

Elektroprivreda Srbije ad Beograd

Fiskalni savet Republike Srbije

Committee on Finance State Budget and Control of Public Spending of the National Assembly of Serbia

Pavle Petrovic

excise taxes

gross domestic product

GDP

inflation

reports

budget revision

reforms