The three-year programme of fiscal consolidation has been evidently off to a successful start, in terms of deficit reduction, as it has been trimmed from 6.6 to 3.7 percent of GDP, the Fiscal Council of Serbia said on Wednesday.
In 2015, the deficit was actually cut by 2.4 percent of GDP, so the real deficit with which Serbia has entered 2016 stands at around 4.2 percent of GDP. Big payments that public enterprises made to the budget accounted for an overall better picture (by around 0.5 percent), the Council noted.
However, the fiscal deficit of 3.7 percent of GDP is still too high for Serbia, they noted.
The temporary savings were also made because the planned policies have not been carried through – downsizing, privatization, public investments etc. Thus, this spending has actually been postponed until the next year, the Council said.
Source: Tanjug
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