The World Bank gives Serbia four tasks

As a support for measures which have already been undertaken by the Government of Serbia to reform public administration and state finances, the World Bank has recently granted an aid of 75 billion dollars to Serbia. However, the reception of the money is dependent on the condition that Serbia achieves concrete goals – enforcing the law on the salary system for the public sector and reducing the number of employees, as well as increasing the control of the expenditure of assets and centralizing public procurement.

Srdjan Svircev of the World Bank’s Belgrade office said for the RTS Dnevnik (Daily News) that there are four goals which Serbia needs to achieve.

- The first one concerns the enforcement of the law on the salary system for the public sector, the second one refers to the reduction in the number of employees, and then there’s the control of the expenditure of assets and the improvement of public procurement system through centralized procurement – said Svircev.

The deadline for the setting of salaries in the private sector, that is, the introduction of salary bands is January 1, which is proscribed by the law. He emphasizes that salaries need to be set in accordance with the law, using the salary base, which will be defined, and creating a list of coefficients.

- It must be determined how many employees the public sector needs. Based on the state’s results and the number of employees who will take severance packages, assets will be granted. So, relative to the number of employees which will leave the public sector, assets will be granted for the severance payments which are proscribed by the Labor Law – said Svircev.

While talking about the support to the carrying out of the centralized public procurement procedures, representative of the World Bank in Serbia said that the process would enable the establishing of the best price and quality for the amounts which need to be procured.

- Instead of each institution carrying out its own public procurement procedures, all procurement procedures can be controlled from a single place – added Svircev.

He pointed out that Serbia had to fulfill all its obligations by the end of 2018.

- I hope that everything will be fulfilled by then, because this loan is meant to support the results that the Government needs to produce with the help of this program – says Svircev.