Pensions "may have to be reduced" by end of year

Pensions "may have to be reduced" by end of year

BELGRADE -- Finance Minister Lazar Krstić has announced that "pensions also may have to be cut" by the end of this year.

Speaking for the public broadcaster RTS, he said his ministry's priority would be "fiscal consolidation and introduction of financial discipline."

Krstić said that Serbia must save "some RSD 170 billion in the next four years," while only in 2014 and 2015, this figure must reach "about a billion euros."

According to him, there is a surplus of employees in the public sector.

The minister further noted that although the government "will try to do all it can to reduce the financial consolidation's negative effects," he "thought that by the end of the year, or in the next budget, pensions would also have to be decreased."

Krstić recalled that public sector salaries would be ten percent lower starting July 1, while the so-called solidarity tax would be abolished - "and the rest will have to be found on the spending side, that is, a more rigorous control of expenditures of public companies will have to be done."

"We all agreed to do all that is possible, to see how much we can reduce losses in public companies and save in the state administration to reduce as much as possible the negative effect on the citizens. Do I believe we will fully succeed? I do not," said the minister.

Speaking about pensions, Minister of Public Administration and Local Self-Government Kori Udovički said that the government "will perhaps succeed in accelerating economic growth sufficiently with the announced measures, so that pensions would not have to be reduced."

"But if you ask for my honest, expert opinion, I doubt it...