Parties spend over RSD 2 billion on elections

BELGRADE - Parties reported that they spend over RSD 2 billion on the 2014 parliamentary elections and more than 40 percent of the sum (RSD 942 million) was claimed by the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) which won the majority support of the voters, Transparency Serbia released on Friday.

Transparency Serbia Programme Director Nemanja Nenadic said at a new conference on Friday, presenting the report on monitoring of the election campaign funding, that all other parliamentary parties have reported as few as RSD 640 million worth of costs in the campaign before the March 16 elections.

He noted that three parties conducted expensive campaigns and spent RSD 442 million, but they were left without MP seats.

Nenadic said that RSD 745 million were allocated for the purpose from the budget and added that this is a similar sum to that used for the election purposes in 2012, if only parliamentary elections were the subject of monitoring.

Nevertheless, the same parties were granted considerably higher funds from the budget due to simultaneous staging of the presidential, provincial and local elections (totalling over EUR 17 million) and the scope of campaign was not much more extensive, Nenadic said.

He said that there are some uncovered expenses in the electoral campaign and that the greatest stake in the outstanding debt belongs to the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) which did not win seats in the parliament (86 percent of outstanding dues). The Democratic Party of Serbia (DSS) and United Regions of Serbia (URS), whose MP also failed to win seats in the parliament, have over 44 percent of outstanding debt and the Democratic Party has a 30 percent stake in the outstanding debt.

It is obvious that the parties...