Speaking on Pink TV, Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić said that the state of emergency is in effect until the end of March, although the state has not formally introduced it, and that "the state is bleeding". "For us, those eight months are the most difficult compared to all the previous ten years," says Vučić. There are many reasons for this state of emergency, he says - the drought, which causes the import of electricity whose price breaks all previous limits, the lack of coal, the wild price of gas on the world market, borrowing with high interest rates, the return of four billion euros of debt next year...
Vučić also says that "we would not import electricity today if there was no drought, but we pay two million euros a day, sometimes three, because there is no water in the rivers, in Djerdap...". At the same time, he does not mention that, if he is not to blame for the jump in the price of energy products caused by the war in Ukraine, his government is directly responsible for the fact that Serbia does not produce enough electricity even for itself, instead of exporting it as before, because the leadership that EPS led to he and his party set up to fail in the previous years. His statement that "electricity has become a problem in the summer as well, because we have a much better standard of living, so we have air conditioners, and hydrology doesn't 'work' at all", seems cynical in light of those facts.
Despite all the mentioned problems, Vučić announced that salaries in the public sector will be increased between 1 and 12,5 percent from January 14. "We have made plans to increase wages and much more." We expect salaries from January 1 to be increased between 12,5 and 14 percent, which will again be significantly higher than year-on-year inflation. "Nowhere else will incomes grow so much in such a way, so that we don't endanger the rate of public debt again," said the President of Serbia. He also announced a 19 percent increase in pensions "if everything related to electricity, gas and other things doesn't hit us", and added that part of the increase will go from November, and that they will try to do it from October as well.
The president did not explain in detail how all the mentioned real problems will be reconciled with the announced increases.
MT/FoNet
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