President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vucic, said that because of the epidemic of corona virus the government will soon take economic measures necessary for overcoming of the crisis. Everything possible will be done to prevent the dismissals, while all small entrepreneurs will be getting a financial help equal to national minimum wage (250 euros) during next three months. The measures will cost the government round 700 million euros and the resources will come mostly from the budget reserves and loans from domestic and foreign banks. Mentioning the EU decision to loosen budgetary restrictions and a similar IMF recommendation on the subject, he emphasized that Serbia will still take care not to accumulate too much debt and to keep it under the critical 60% of the GDP.
His statement on granting all citizens of age a sum of 100 euros as a kind of “first aid”, was judged by many economists as highly controversial. Many of them disagree with that, considering it would be much better to grant it only to those who were dismissed or belong to vulnerable groups. They are likewise skeptical about the President’s statement that “the decrease of Serbia’s GDP growth rate will be only half of the one of Germany and will permit us to be at the “positive zero” at the end of the year”.
Serbian Association of Managers asked the government to intervene urgently and safeguard the liquidity of small and medium enterprises, help the payment of their workers’ wages and facilitate them to refinance their current liabilities and capital investments. One should not, they think, allow any disruption of the payment chain that could push the country into a deeper crisis. At the same time, the Association has underlined the importance of workers’ health protection and preservation of jobs.
In the meantime, a scandal erupted in the Clinical Centre of Nis, where the management decided to reduce the salaries of health employees suffering from corona virus infection by 35%. Under the pretext of following strictly the provisions of the Labour Law, they “forgot” that we are living in an extraordinary situation, where such cases could have legitimately been treated as work accidents or a professional disease and the employees paid 100% salaries. After a sharp response of the CATUS and other trade unions, director Radovanovic has, however, left space for decision’s revision. It is obvious that the toppling of workers’ rights – in a situation where hundreds of thousands of Serbian citizens express their gratitude and admiration for health workers’ sacrifice by applauding them every evening from their balconies – is fully absurd.
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