Investments in realization of non-existent plan
The Minister of Finance announced that the proceeds from the sale of “Komercijalna Banka” will be invested "in a smart way" and "primarily in the investment plan ‘Serbia 2025’ ".These 400 million euros may be used wisely but certainly not on the basis of the "Serbia 2025 Investment Plan", because such document does not exist.
After a press conference held on December 28, 2019, when the President of Serbia and the Prime Minister announced more investments in road infrastructure, followed by related information published by the ministries of finance and construction under the title “Serbia 2025”, Transparency Serbia requested from the Government and both ministries copies of this plan, information on the process of its elaboration and adoption.
It is clear from the response of the General Secretariat of the Government that the Government of the Republic of Serbia has not adopted any specific act related to this plan, program or strategy called "Serbia 2025". In this response,it is also stated that the president and prime minister presented “a vision of Serbia’s development” at the press conference.
Transparency Serbia previously indicated that "Serbia 2025" can neither be a program nor an investment plan in terms of the Law on the Planning System, since these documents are not enacted for three or seven years, nor can it be a government work program, because the term of office of the incumbent government is about to end.
We also received a response from the Ministry of Construction with a lot but not all of the information requested.Specifically, this ministry provided a list of projects in which the ministry will "participate", for which funds have been provided and project for which "ways of financing, documentation preparation and further steps are being considered", but there was no information on the process of drafting the "Serbia 2025" plan or copies of related documents .
The Ministry of Finance did not respond at all to the request for access to information. This ministry is actually responsible for preparing public expenditure plans, not only for the current budget year, but also for a three-year period through the Fiscal Strategy. We would like to bring to mind that neither the Law on the Budget of the Republic of Serbia, nor the Fiscal Strategy related to the period 2020-2022mention the plan/program "Serbia 2025".
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