17.05.2010.

Prime Minister Cvetkovic's lecture to the students of the National Defense School

Prime Minister of Serbia Mirko Cvetkovic gave a lecture to the attendees of the general staff, National Defense School, on the subject “The strategy of the sustainable development of Serbia”.
The lecture was also attended by Defense Minister Dragan Sutanovac along with the SAF CHOD LTG Miloje Miletic.

Prime Minister spoke of general goals of the development such as democracy, economy, and social justice, and social justice, emphasizing that these goals are long-term goals, which cannot be achieved within one government’s mandate.

«Using these goals as a starting point, the Government of Serbia is intensifying its reforms in all directions, such as judiciary reforms which has generated most media interest in the public”, as her said adding that an intensive legislation activity was afoot, in order to approximate and harmonization of our legislation with the EU system.

«SAF is also undertaking intensive reforms, most of which have already been presented to the public, and we are heading at full speed towards full professionalization by the end of the year as was planned”, said Cvetkovic in his address.

The key of these reforms is to improve the standard of life of people, and of the economy.

«This moment is marked by the global economic and financial crisis, whose effects and consequences we are still feeling, so the key thing is to assess the moment, to see whether we have weathered this financial storm, what are the effects in its wake, its elements, risk and possible course of action”.

The government implemented three types of measures to curb the crisis which spread from the world to Serbia. The first group includes the damage-control of the financial sector, followed by economy-related measures, and the third group involved measures to help the infrastructure in Serbia, that is, increasing the demand for the domestic products, and creating new work positions.

Besides the deficit and other effects on the GDP, the worst possible consequence was the employment rate of 14.3 %, which is a significantly higher rate that in other crisis-ridden countries, and that is our major problem.

“In formal and statistical terms, we have weathered the crisis, however, this has not yet reflected on the standard of living of people”, as PM said, saying that recovery is soon to follow. Speedy recovery is unlikely, as restoring growth rates prior to the crisis should not be expected earlier than 2012.

In his answer to the National Defense School attendees’ questions he said that currently we are trying to boost effectiveness, predominantly in the field of cutting down budgetary users’ expenditures, that is there is an ongoing evaluation if we need as many budget-funded employees on a certain position. That is an arduous task, but he expected that this would be finalized.

AS for the Public Procurement Act, Cvetkovic said that this was one of the most important systematic laws adopted by the democratic government, as it helped the transparency in the field of public bids.