Fund for Young Talents awards 333 stipends
Serbian Deputy Prime Minister Miroljub Labus, Minister of Education and Sport Slobodan Vuksanovic and Minister of Finance Mladjan Dinkic handed over today 333 stipends provided by the Fund for Young Talents to final year students. The total amount of the stipends is approximately €1 million.
Dinkic said that each student will receive 20,000 dinars per month, and the first amount will be paid out for November 2005. The total annual stipend per student is €2,750, and the money will be deposited into accounts that students have opened in certain banks free of charge, he added.
Dinkic stressed that the fund has allocated €5 million this year for one thousand of the best students, but that only 333 students have fulfilled the conditions, and one hundred out of these 333 are students that have extremely high grade point averages.
According to Dinkic, the Serbian government will set aside €10 million next year for the Fund for Young Talents.
Labus and Vuksanovic wished all students to successfully complete their studies, stay in the country afterwards and help build a good European state.
Rector of the Belgrade University Dejan Popovic said that by giving these stipends the government annuls the injustice of having disregarded the best students in the past.
Of the total number of students who have been awarded, half are students from the University of Belgrade, 38 percent from the University of Novi Sad, around seven percent are studying at the Nis University, three percent at the Kragujevac University and one percent at the University in Pristina.
The largest number of stipends went to students at technical and art faculties, and then to students studying at faculties of philosophy, medicine and economics.