The Victor About To Face A Defeat

The results of the elections didn't even cooled off, when the authorities' pre-election promises and moves started being corrected. Everyone probably remembers the messages sent by Radoman Bozovic, in this case the owner of the Serbian electric power industry, to voters a few weeks ago: electricity bills can be paid until the 20th in the month, and interests would not be charged for that 12-day prolongation. At the electric power industry they were silent or bashfully kept saying that they had not received any such information from the Serbian government. Now the sellers of electricity say without beating around the bush that interest will have to be paid for every delay in payments, and the Serbian prime minister is silent. The monthly growth of prices and of costs of living is yet another illustration which is also good enough and sufficient for assessing the extended authority. Very few people were not surprized by the official inflation in November which was said to have accounted for 33%, and there were also many of those who publicly and in an argumented way disputed this saying that the percentage is impossibly low, that is, that this is the pre-election inflation. Due to all those disputes, the public practically didn't even take note of the remark by the director of the republican statistics bureau, that the inflation in December would be much higher.

Milovan Zivkovic now confirms this estimating that the December inflation would account for 65%. In other words, the authorities admit that the Serbian economy is once again in the waters of hyper-inflation. However, the attitude taken up to now of "now we are - now we aren't" is by no means harmless. When we compare this December with the same month last year the inflation accounts for between 20,000% and 21,000%. The trend of the growth of inflation is such, they claim at the republican statistics bureau, that the inflation in January, compared to the average monthly inflation in 1992, will account for around 320% - without one single price-hike in that month. However, there is no need to add even the slightest doze of cynicism to this situation. It is enough to say the following: the federal statistics bureau has calculated that over a five-year period, that is since the "historical" 1987, salaries in Serbia dropped by one quarter. Now certain economists are arguing over whether every inhabitant of Serbia would enter the new year with an average annual national income of 500 or 700 US dollars. Of course, the difference is not insignificant, but it is much more important to recall that three years ago the level of the general and individual standard, measured in this way, was four to six times higher than today. Apart from that, one cannot say that the level at the end of next year will be the same as that in January. That is practically impossible due to the general trend of the further and speedy impoverishment, so that Serbia and Montenegro will, next year, officially join the group of poor countries, that is, of those whose annual national income per capita is below 500 USD. There are no other such states in Europe. This practically means that, on the optimistic assumption that the level of 500 USD per capita would be retained until the end of the year, every inhabitant of Serbia would have approximately around 42 USD a month, and a four-member family less than 130 USD. But, this is an indicator of the social standard applied to the individual. One only has to deduct from those 130 USD the state and parastate dues in order for the initial sum to be reduced to one third. And with a little less than 45 USD for all the monthly expenditures of a four-member family, or with around 100,000 dinars at the present black market exchange rate, one can do nothing but choose between lines in front of foreign embassies and those in front of banks which give a monthly interest higher than that given for a whole year in the normal world. However, these lines in front of the mentioned banks point to yet another "skill" of the creators of the Serbian policy. If it weren't for them, that is income from savings, there would already be lines in Terazije waiting in front of caldrons for free soup. Nothing else can be expected in a state whose social product, measured by constant prices, was reduced by 40.8% in five years, and whose industrial production dropped by 43.2%. It is impossible for one employee to provide food and clothing for five unemployed, according to estimates (including pensioners because of the empty funds). It is not possible to even imagine an end to that downfall when business deals and capital are leaving the country, and when foreign financial aid is far away. The answer to the question what would happen if "the others" came to power, which was mostly posed before the elections, was: it would be even worse. But only for a moment. That is the moment of sobering up and finding out how much damage the authorities have done in the past five years, from the destroyed infrastructure (it is not by accident that the electric power industry has announced an increase in prices by 130%), to the fact that not only are there not enough oil fields but that there are also no pipes for new research. It is uncertain how long this facing of the truth would last because the beginning of a return to a normal state of affairs and the later on expansion of the national economy primarily depend on the lifting of the sanctions and the restoration of the trust of both domestic and foreign investors. Looking from the side, that is through a comparison with the situation in Croatia and Slovenia, the fact that Croatia has already stepped into hyper-inflation, although the authorities there are preparing a serious privatization of small and medium-sized firms, is little comfort for the people here. The hope that we could catch up with Slovenia if the authorities in Serbia changed is even more far-fetched. In Slovenia there is increasingly more foreign goods and capital; from last December to this October the inflation accounted for 85.5%; foreign trade has been balanced; the exchange rate of the tolar is stable...

All in all, the European and world doors are being opened to Slovenia: at the European bank Slovenia was recently described as a central European country, while the other republics of the former Yugoslavia were placed in the south-east of the continent. Of course, Serbia can live well even though this life would not be as good as in Slovenia.