State Bans Prices

It is not standard procedure for a minister's statement to take the place of a government statement, but we must believe Tomic, considering that other interpretations of the Serbian government's decision have not been announced. Briefly, the government demands that prices be returned to those of the aforementioned date because they were stable then. The government's demand includes all, but assessments will be made which of the price rises made in the meantime are justified and which are not. Tomic underscored that justified price increases would not be allowed to exceed 10%, but that this too would not be without exceptions, judging by the fact that there will be no price decrease for electricity consumed by households, even though recent price increases are greatly above the allowed limit. Tomic underscored that the Serbian government had opted for this step because, according to a statement in Wednesday's issue of the Belgrade daily "Politika": "We assess that the increase has resulted from the old habit of hiking prices at the end, i.e. the start of the year. Prices are increased in order to ensure stability in business deals. But, since we have opted for economic principles and a market economy, and since we are living under conditions of isolation, we must not allow for monopoly behavior." At the same time, Tomic said that an anti-monopoly law would soon be debated in the Assembly, one whose preparation has been greeted by the experts with the recommendation that it should not be allowed to "transform into a legal basis for the introduction of a general control of prices."

The second key point in Tomic's message is that the Government will carry out the returning of prices to those of late July through administrative measures, but they will be economically enforced. These "economic" measures have not been listed, but the withholding of credit has been mentioned, including aid in importing raw materials and production materials, intervention imports etc. One of these "economic" measures is Tomic's belief that workers will demand responsibility for irresponsible directors, i.e., for those who don't act according to the Government's orders immediately. The sequence of events will be as follows: it is expected that the first factories to lower their prices will be those whose directors are also members of the Serbian government. Considering that only a price decrease for producers is being mentioned, this practically means that Ivko Djonovic ("Takovo" foodstuffs) and Radoje Djukic ("Djukic" knitwear) are expected to do something, but not Dragan Tomic (as General Manager of the "Simpo" furniture factory). One of the "Simpo" directors said on television on Tuesday evening that the price of only nine out one thousand of their products had gone up. After this it will be the turn of businessmen who are members of a number of coordinating teams (for coordination between the government and the firms), starting with the central one led by minister Tomic, right down to all branches and groups. All in all, the matter concerns the directors of 150 of the biggest firms in Serbia. If, during the period of some ten days they do not act in accordance with the Government's orders they face the possibility of being dismissed from various coordinating teams, after which the announced economic measures will be put into force, and if none of this yields any results, then the workers will enter the scene and demand that the directors be removed for having tried to demand more money for their work than the state or some parastate know-alls deemed the right sum.

At this point it is necessary to recall writer Ivo Andric's hero who believed that evil lives in all women, and that it must be exorcised by work or birth-giving, and that if this fails, then the woman must be killed.

Translated into our present economic reality, this can only mean that shortages will become more frequent. The authorities will delude the population by coming up with a guilty party from time to time, and they will be able to flog a dead horse for some time, maintaining an illusion of stability, even prosperity thanks to television and other propaganda tricks (good examples, shock workers, annual plans fulfilled ahead of deadlines, our people's inventiveness and intrepidness...)

The citizens will receive a lot of encouragement - this is borne out by the drop in price of dailies this week: we will preserve the living standard of the citizens - claim publishing houses, but you must give us sufficient quantities of domestic newsprint, even if the price is more than half that in the world. The state will do this, or rather it can do so, because it has taken over the administration of one of Yugoslavia's biggest paper producers, by replacing the "incompetent" management with its "competent" management, which showed its capabilities with a speedy program of recovery in which one of the main points was refusing to pay outstanding debts. With this kind of a market economy it is surprising that the citizens are not given the papers free including a money bonus, all the more so as they will find it increasingly difficult to buy something. The same recipe can be applied in an unlimited number of cases considering that it must be borne in mind, when thinking of the economy here, that the authorities control, through state or social (party) property, 85% of the entire national economy.