Doctor for the Dinar

His name is not sufficiently familiar to the public whose curiosity has been additionally triggered by a remark that Avramovic had been a director of the World Bank for many years. In order to make the portrait of Dragoslav Avramovic we have decided to talk to him in person.

During our first telephone conversation Dragoslav Avramovic revealed, apart from a slight English accent, openness towards the press, which is rare here. "If you come in ten minutes we'll have twenty-five minutes to talk," he said creating an impression of a man who is not used to asking somebody whether he can make a statement for the press.

"I was born in Skopje (Macedonia), as my parents taught there, but I will not tell you when," Avramovic, who is trying to carry his age with ease (70-80 years old), said at the beginning. He added that his father Nikola, as the president of the municipality of Ohrid, was a founder of tourism in the town.

He finished his studies at the Law Faculty in Belgrade in 1941, where he spent the war ailing. The first job he got after the liberation was in the field of money and finances - he was appointed Secretary of the Commission for exchange of occupation money founded by the Government of the People's Federal Democratic Yugoslavia (NDFJ): it is a pure coincidence that Avramovic will again undertake a similar job in several days' time. "Its Highness 'Luck' has played a significant role in my life," Avramovic said and stressed that he was fortunate to meet outstanding financial experts while working in this commission. This helped him get a job, as a secretary, first in the National Bank, and later in the Ministry of Finance.

Another great task young expert Avramovic undertook brings up associations. In 1947 he dealt with questions of freeing gold reserves of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and problems of paying for nationalized foreign property. In 1948, when Tito's Yugoslavia was under blockade of Stalin's Soviet Union, Avramovic was one of the team who closely communicated with the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank as well as Governments of the United States and Great Britain regarding a financial and developmental support to our country from the West. It was then when he became assistant professor at the Law Faculty but also kept the position of an advisor in the Central Banks and the Ministry of Finance.

As early as 1953 he received an offer from the International bank for reconstruction and development in Washington to work on the research of questions pertaining to future relations between East European countries, on one hand, and the world and the world market, on the other. That was the beginning of his international career. Avramovic stressed that he never broke off his contacts with Belgrade over the next 35 years nor ever applied for a foreign passport. Besides, even in his young days he made friends with a group of local economists who are still influential nowadays.

He was quickly promoted at the Department of Economic Studies of the World Bank - from the head of the department to the director. His first project dealt with the problem of debt of developing countries. In late fifties', John Hopkins, the publisher from Baltimore, published Avramovic's book "The Capacity of Service in Debts and International Development." Later he headed a group of authors who worked on the project "Economic Growth and Debts." Avramovic said "that was where he arrived at a conclusion that everything has to do with interest rates and that each strategy of economic growth has to be based on them." On this assignment he made a number of important acquaintances. He took the side of the world's poor which recommended him for new projects.

That is how he tackled a second group of topics which dealt with depressed prices of primary products on the world market, with the special emphasis on agricultural products. "Surpluses, bad credits, international blackmails, policies of reserves, low prices, blessings and curses of producers. I encountered all that in Latin America, Africa and Asia," Avramovic said and pointed out, "Although I've never seen a coffee tree, I think I dare say that I am one of the authors of the International agreement on coffee prices."

Afterwards he was more directly occupied with a problem of industrialization of developing counties, especially in Iran, Pakistan and India. A protest movement of the undeveloped against arrogance of the rich and their relaxed and conventional approach to the burning problems of poor countries had gained momentum at the time, Avramovic noted. The people from Group 77 noted his efforts, as a result of which he was sent for two years to Geneva in 1974 and 1975 to work on the project of the Joint fund for primary products within the framework of UNCTAD. He believes that it was then when the relationship between him and the leading people in the World Bank became tense, which is why he later resigned.

In 1977 he definitely moved to Geneva where he was appointed co-secretary and member of the famous "Brandt Commission" ( the independent commission for the questions of international economic development).

After the Brandt Commission completed its work he stayed in Geneva as a senior adviser to the Secretary General of the United Nations for cooperation with developing countries. He did a study on the Bank of developing countries which was accepted at the meeting in Ljubljana in 1977.

In 1989 Dragoslav Avramovic returned to Belgrade, where he took over the local Center of the European movement for peace and development. This institution organizes international scientific banking conventions and the last one dedicated to the processes of transition in Eastern Europe, was held in Milocer, Montenegro.

Avramovic became a member of the Economic Council of the Serbian Government. "We were very active during 1992. I may say I was one of the main authors of the short-term stabilization program which was implemented by the government of the then Prime Minister Radoman Bozovic in the summer of 1992 and which slowed down the inflation during the autumn of that year," Avramovic pointed out.

However, a crucial event, as far as our story is concerned, took place in July last year when Dragoslav Avramovic wrote the book "The Crisis of Dinar" where he claims that hyperinflation cannot be curbed gradually. "I wrote then that a gradual transition from one system into another is impossible, that the entire monetary system and everything that is implied by the monetary economy, must be built on new grounds," Avramovic stressed. He added that the price of a Dinar against hard currencies cannot be stabilized without a thorough reconstruction.

When asked how he had been appointed head of the expert team for drafting a stabilization program, Avramovic replied, "Someone has read my study and I became president of this team in September-October. Until this very day I have never been told to adopt such and such principle or to do this or that."

We also asked him if there is a possibility to weaken the program at the last moment by adopting an expert or a political compromise. Avramovic said that this has not happened so far, and that we will see what happens. What's interesting is his remark that the program had been ready on December 5. We also asked him whether he would be an operative supervisor of the implementation of the anti-inflation program, and Avramovic answered that there has been a vague mention of that.

Leaving Dragoslav Avramovic's "headquarters", we left him at the street light on his way to the building where the Cabinet of Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic is and where he was to find a negative answer from the International Monetary Fund.