Prices of mobile telephony services in Serbia increased by 8.4%

Starting today (June 1st, 2009), the prices of mobile telephony services in Serbia will be higher due to introduction of additional tax on mobile telephony.

According to the operators, new tax of 10% is added on the basic prices of services, without the value added tax, which means that the bills will be about 8.4% higher than before.

The tax will be charged for mobile phone talks, as well as for special services in the country and abroad, such as the replacement of SIM card or number, issuing of special numbers and sending of call list to home address, text SMS messages, multimedia MMS messages and using of GPRS Internet.

As the operators explained, the tax will not be charged to postpaid users for the payment of parking via SMS and lottery games organized by the State Lottery of Serbia, to the users of foreign mobile operators during their stay in Serbia for roaming services, and to prepaid users for interests, penalties and court taxes, as well as for so-called "SOS credit".

Also, the tax will not be charged for mobile phones, Internet modems and additional equipment for mobile telephones, such as SIM cards, batteries, chargers, memory cards and bags.

The tax will be presented as a special category in the bills sent to postpaid users who will receive their first larger bill in July, for the impulses in June.

The prices of top-up cards for prepaid users will not be changed because the tax will be included in the price of top-up cards, that is, the value of the card will be reduced by that amount.

All three operators - MTS, Telenor and VIP - will increase the prices under the same conditions

The Minister of Finance, Diana Dragutinović, said that she hoped that the new tax, introduced because of the crisis within the scope of the budget rebalance, would be "temporary" and announced its revoking as soon as the crisis was over.