Economics

The IMF delegation's mid-June visit to Serbia has briefly suppressed the country's traditional problems, bringing to the forefront an additional one, namely the reform of the public sector.  

 In light of the stagnant economy, fiscal problems are coming to the forefront. They consist of high state expenditure which is partially financed by indebtedness, but also of irrational utilization of loans taken, which are being used as a means for buying the social peace, instead for investments – for example, in infrastructure.

Due to computerization and automatization, knowledge-based capitalism creates societal wealth with less work. Two fundamental questions arise from this: if the society is producing more wealth with less work, how can it then render every individual’s income dependent of the workload delivered by that individual? And further, how the economic problem, namely that, under the given circumstances, exclusion of labor leads to the decrease of the means of payment brought in circulation (salaries) and thus to the decrease of solvent demands.

It is said that knowledge, besides capital, will become an increasingly significant production factor of the modern society.

Similar to some other countries, during the last couple of years Serbia, too, has been the scene of increasing debates about the problem of a fast debt growth and the possibility of the country being hit by debt crisis.

“Patience is the virtue (of fools)“, goes the old folk saying. In other words, the question is raised how the Serbian economy will survive this “spring cleaning“ on its feet.