Economists: There are no obstacles to reform implementation

BELGRADE - The new government is facing great challenges, including inevitable implementation of reforms, and since all obstacles to this have been removed and the party won the majority in the elections, they will have little room for pointing to “brakesmen” of reforms as an excuse, said participants in a panel organized at the Tanjug Press Club late on Sunday.

“With 157 MPs, the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) and (their leader) Aleksandar Vucic as prime minister will have a free hand to do what they have announced doing,” said Milan Culibrk, economic analyst and editor-in-chief of NIN, a Belgrade-based weekly.

“If their slogan was ‘With all strength into reforms’, now they have the MPs now to implement it,” he said at the panel titled “Political and Economic Expectations of a New Government – Possible Ruling Coalitions at National and Local Levels”.

He expressed the hope that the general public will learn about the reforms in question soon and that the government will deal with the budget revision first, as revenues are overestimated.

One of the key problems facing the government is resolving the issue of about 150 enterprises in restructuring that employ about 100,000 people and whose status is to be resolved by the end of the first half of this year.

“We can expect delays, which is not good, but it is not realistic to expect the job to be done in two months' time,” Culibrk said, adding that the government has to stop giving subsidies.

“Every government deserves (to be given) 100 days, but I think now it is not necessary,” he said, adding that it should adopt the announced laws by the end of June.

He said he thinks a big problem for the Serbian economy is...