A Fruitless Effort

Leaving aside the disastrous outcome of the Serbian Loan, when after 2 billion dinars (later 5 billion dinars) were collected, a billion dollar cash in was planned (only around 3 percent of the planned foreign currency was collected), most of the documents were not available to the public.

The only remotely precise "programme of reform and development" was devised in 1990 by the then Serbian president dr Stanko Radmilovic, but it was not used in the pre-election campaign. It could be that even the socialists found their formula of independent Serbia at the cost of disregarding the constitution too obliging. Even Radmilovic in his programme did not expand on the popular thesis that the increase of production will be the main aim of the Serbian government - he only used it to attack Markovic's recessionary policy.

Still, if one considers the main points of this programme, such as controlled market, the nationalization of the economy, protectionism, low interest rates, export subsidies, breaking off the unjust energy contracts, agricultural subsidies - it could be safely asserted that most of it has been realized - with disastrous effect on the standard of living.

Let us remind ourselves of the actual results of this pre-election campaign: the Serbian Parliament passed a group of laws in October 1990 which strips the federation of its authority - including the customs monopoly, the excise tax, the concession to foreigners and foreign borrowing. The authority of the federation concerning the issuing of 18 billion dinars has simultaneously been taken over - all this in a single night.

In the past year of independent economic policy the Serbian socialists changed three governments, they have lost 80% of the market and a drop in production in 31 industries out of 35 has been recorded, around a million and a half people are employed in insolvent firms while 500 000 are facing expulsion. The standard of living has fallen to one third of what it used to be. The losses far exceed the accumulation, the investment is almost non-existent as well as the inflow of foreign capital, Serbia is already feeling the effects of trade and traffic isolation. The electricity is not being exported, the oil supplies have been cut off, the air traffic is severely affected, the tourists are not coming to Kopaonik this year.