The state of public finances is stable, the revenue and expenditure sides of the budget are carefully and responsibly planned, and there is no fear of the scenarios presented to the public by certain political entities, Ministry of Finance responded to the question of whether the claims of the former finance minister Milojko Spajić that there will be no money in the budget in June, are correct.
The department headed by Aleksandar Damjanović said that the state treasury currently has EUR 270 million of available funds and all obligations are settled properly, including increased wages for 41,500 employees at the state and local level, without commenting on the position of former finance minister Milojko Spajić that they may not use the money for current consumption.
Spajić claims that 100 million of that money was borrowed from Deutsche Bank to repay earlier loans, that 30 million EUR from economic citizenship can be used exclusively for regional development and capital projects, and 27 million from EU aid to citizens and businesses, and that there and gold worth EUR 65 million.
The Ministry of Finance reminds that they have so far borrowed the sixth part of this year’s planned borrowing of EUR 600 million and that it “corresponds to the actual budgetary needs at this moment”.
In the first quarter, we had a 30% increase in revenue compared to the comparable period last year (EUR 127 million more), while only in March 30 million more than planned were collected – the Ministry said, adding that the national debt is lower by 2.96%, which is the result of the increase in estimated GDP for this year.
Confirmation that the Government conducts financial policy responsibly and predictably also comes from credible international addresses, as evidenced by the confirmed credit rating of Standard&Poor’s agency, as well as the increased forecast of GDP growth to 3.2% in the latest spring analyzes of the IMF – the Ministry said. .
From that department, they stated that at the end of last year and at the beginning of this year, eight laws were passed which are focused on strengthening tax discipline and raising the so-called tax morale, that is, the expansion of the tax scope with the aim of suppressing the gray area of business and creating a favorable and competitive business environment.
The measures implemented last year resulted in an increase in income from excise taxes on tobacco by EUR 32 million – the Ministry specified, adding that a record inflow of foreign direct investments of EUR 1 billion was also achieved.
The Ministry of Finance assessed that the “Europe Now” program proved to be problematic in many ways from the aspect of sustainability, and that this was also assessed by the IMF, which has the richest experience in analysis, planning and effecting of measures introduced through public policies.
In addition to the complete financial endangerment and questioning of the survival of the Health Insurance Fund, which was practically left without a basic source of financing, while maintaining the obligation to provide services, that program had negative consequences on the financing of municipalities, the operations of small and medium-sized enterprises and on the status of pensioners – the Ministry said and added that they expect the Constitutional Court to rule on the legality of such a procedure, “after which they will have guidelines for further action”.
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