Financial committee supports budget for the upcoming year
The Serbian parliament’s financial committee unanimously supported the bill on the Republic’s budget for 2006, with projections for 2007 and 2008.
Serbian Minister of Finance Mladjan Dinkic said in his introductory speech that it is the first time, after a number of years, that the issue is projections of the budget that any minister should be satisfied with, because on one hand public expenditure has been reduced significantly, and on the other hand, allocations for capital investments have been increased.
He explained that the bill envisages that in the upcoming year the budgetary revenues total a sum of 487.9 billion dinars, expenditure 448.3 billion dinars, while the budgetary surplus should stand at 39.6 billion dinars.
According to Dinkic, it is expected that a sum of 30 billion dinars will be realised through revenues from privatisation.
The committee agreed on finance plans for 2006 for Serbia’s Pension and Disability Insurance (PIO) fund for employees, independent agriculturalists and insurance holders, Serbia’s National Health Insurance and National Employment Bureau.
Dinkic also said that official negotiations are being sought with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on the new one-year arrangement that would come in effect from the middle of 2006.
He said that the date of the realisation of the future arrangement does not depend only on Serbia, adding that this year’s arrangement with the IMF will end in January next year.