European Commission approves €22.5 assistance to Serbia
Serbian Minister of Finance Mladjan Dinkic said today that the European Commission (EC) has approved €22.5 million in macro financial assistance to Serbia.
Dinkic told Beta news agency that this is the first time that the new government has received financial assistance from the European Union.
Dinkic stressed that thanks to the aid from the EC, around 100 million dinars will be placed in the budgetary reserve.
This reserve, he explained, will be enough to cover one-third of the planned deficit in 2005 and to help with the implementation of value added tax (VAT).
“We have received two tranches of the loan from the IMF, three tranches of the World Bank’s loan, and now, at the end of the year, the EU has given us joy with this assistance,” said Dinkic.