Udovicki: Radical changes lest we only work to pay interest

BELGRADE - Serbia will end up in a situation of no longer being able to finance its debts, of seeing the interest rates growing and everyone working only to pay interests, unless radical changes are introduced by the end of the year, Serbian Deputy Prime Minister Kori Udovicki said Wednesday.

Without these changes, Serbia will lose the trust of donors and global financiers, as well as the confidence of the International Monetary Fund that it needs to make an arrangement deal with, Udovicki said while speaking at a regional conference on youth projects in Belgrade.
“The people should realize that changes must hurt now so they would not hurt even more in the future,” Udovicki said.

The country needs to avoid a situation similar to the one faced by Greece recently, she added.
“Without changes we will come to the point where the country will no longer be able to finance its debts. It is the situation when a debt is so large that interests can only grow and where we all actually work only to be able to pay interest,” she said.

“The governments previously succumbed to pressures in the expectation that the situation would get better. And so today, we are in a situation of being a country with a huge budget deficit, seeing our external debt getting doubled in only a few years and even worst, it continues to grow rapidly,” said Udovicki.

Screenshot video Tanjug