The President of Serbia, Aleksandar Vučić, told Pink TV last night that Serbia will create something for "EXPO 2027" that will be in the first two fairgrounds in Europe, as well as up to 130 new hotels. He explained that this event will attract 2,6 million additional tourists.
"Count on spending only 300 euros. We will have to build more than 100, 120 to 130 completely new hotels", said Vučić.
About the implementation of these plans and the budget issued for the organization of the "EXPO 2027" world exhibition, foreign investment consultant Dr. Milan Kovačević spoke for the "Vremena" portal.
"The organization of the world exhibition requires significant investments. On the other hand, when countries that are financially capable do it, that have enough capacity and a large number of visitors, a positive economic effect will follow.
We do not belong to countries of that size, so it is very difficult to believe that we can make such large investments on the one hand, and on the other hand, when the exhibition ends, if such an accommodation capacity is built, then their business will deteriorate because they will not have enough guests ", says Kovačević.
As he says, in order to enter into such an enterprise, a good analysis should first be made. Also, it should be known later if it is a big failure who is the main culprit.
Beautifying reality and the future
"In our country, the government tries to present reality as more beautiful than it is, especially the future. Less is said about what happened in the past, because in the past there were both successes and failures.
So this seems like an attempt to get people upbeat and it might be useful for some upcoming elections. With this, it can also happen that the organization fails, as has already happened in the past with some countries", says Kovačević.
He assesses that these moves by the government contribute to optimism, the image that we are in a good situation and that it will generally contribute to the interest of tourists in our country.
"Unfortunately, we do not have real information about the overall state of our economy. They noticed that the government does not mention our inflation at all, which is big and higher than in other countries. This is our big problem and everyone feels it in their pockets.
Secondly, it is not mentioned that we practically have no economic growth, and without the creation of something new, it cannot be said that we will have a good future and that we will have great potential to invest.
Thirdly, our debt is increasing. There is constant talk about the ratio of our debt to gross domestic product (GDP), which is not the best parameter. It would be better to talk about how the interest that we will have to pay back on that debt is increasing faster, than the debt itself", Kovačević explains.
Focus on the domestic economy
Our interlocutor believes that at the moment it would be justified to think about how we will get out of the current stagflation, which means inflation and almost no growth, and for that purpose we should deal more with domestic agriculture, construction, what kind of deals are concluded with foreign countries, what kind of subsidies are given foreigners and what effects we get from them, why banking is in a privileged position and so on.
"It would be more useful for us to see how we will raise the domestic economy, rather than jumping into the future when we will show the world a world exhibition", says Kovačević.
According to the analysis of Macroeconomic Analysis and Trends (MAT), the total economic effects of this event will exceed one billion euros. It is estimated that this money could flow from the visit of close to three million people who would come from 120 countries of the world.
MATA experts state that the multiplied impact of this event is extremely positive and that this is the effect that Serbia will get the most from this organization.
Sanja Zrnić
