Neither Krstic knows the number of people in public sector

It is possible that public sector has even one million employees? Neither Krstic knows the number of people in public sector

The Minister of Finance admits that for the time being there is no chance that we learn the exact number of people working in the state administration.

The latest official data say that 781,000 people are working in the public sector, while unofficial data indicate that this number is higher by 100,000 people in the least. Milan Krkobabic, the PUPS Deputy President revealed to the Blic that the latest data say that about further 150,000 to 200,000 people are working’ but that ‘it is really unbelievable that there are no precise data’.

In October of 2012 the Ministry of Finance announced that 740,000 people were working in the public sector. Since then until January this year, the Minister of Finance Lazar Krstic revealed new 40,000 cases and pointed out that ‘the number is not final’.

- We have 10,000 state institutions. Some of them still have not forwarded any data, some forwarded incomplete data. So the final number of employees in the public sector shall certainly go over 780,000 people – Krstic says for the Blic. He adds that the precise data who was employing and how many people shall be known when we get the Law on Register. In January the public sector was cut by 4,000 people, without sacking. By that dynamics, as the Minister says, in two years the republican budget may be relieved from 100,000 employees.

However, even then with more than 20 percent of employees in public sector, Serbia would be above the European average. In the public sector in Germany there is 10.3 percent of the total number of...